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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26508940">a library of all the tears in history</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dialux/pseuds/Dialux'>Dialux</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>words for the lost, the captive beautiful, the wives, those less fortunate than we [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bechdel Test Pass, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Colonialism, Dreams and Nightmares, Drowning, F/F, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, Grief, Horror, Like A PG-13 Movie I Use The Word Fuck Exactly Once, Misogyny, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mystery, Names And Etymology, POV Female Character, Passing Hope Down Through The Generations, Queens of Númenor, Secrets &amp; Lies, The Hungry Sea, The Inextricable Trauma Of Watching Your Mother Die, The Seeds of Númenor's Destruction Were Sown At Its Birth, Walking Into Fire Determined To Prove Something, Women Being Awesome, Women Betraying Women, Women In Power, Women Supporting Women, female mentorship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 02:48:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>26,390</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26508940</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dialux/pseuds/Dialux</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><i>I have survived the terrifying before,</i> she says. <i>And I will not surrender to my fate before it is done: I spit on your inevitability.</i></p><p>[In thirty-three centuries, twenty-five women dreamed of the sea in fair Númenor. Of these twenty-five, eighteen were crowned queens. Seven names lived on in history. Three ruled in their own right. All dreamt of death and destruction.</p><p>A story of terror and defiance; a story of despair and hope; a story of seas and mountains and the women who knew the future far before they could ever understand it.]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Canonical relationships - Relationship, Kings of Númenor/Queens of Númenor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>words for the lost, the captive beautiful, the wives, those less fortunate than we [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2101053</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Innumerable Stars 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>a library of all the tears in history</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/2Nienna2/gifts">2Nienna2</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>1. I took inspiration from many different materials, including:<br/>- Ellen Bass' poetry (some of which can be found <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ellen-bass#tab-poems">here)</a><br/>- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d58VJ-sC1uY">"Breath of life"</a> by Florence and the Machine<br/>- <a href="https://soracities.tumblr.com/post/186023495495/secifosseluce-secifosseluce-i-think-so-much">This particular post</a> and the underlying inextricable rage of being a woman in a world built by and for and of men.<br/>- The literal entirety of the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17645.The_Penelopiad">Penelopiad</a><br/>2. I’ve made up names for eighteen of the queens that we do not have names for. Every section begins with their name and the meaning of that name. For women with canonical names and an etymology, I have added that.<br/>3. Look, Numenor is a tragedy (like so much of the Silm)- but it works so hard to make it sound like they deserved the ending! And I just... adore all those stories of someone inducing something to happen by trying to avoid their fate; I just adore the idea of it happening and these women- young women, older women, powerless and silenced and terrible and saintly women- straining to keep their world good and bright even as it felt all too dark.<br/>4. Also, of the canonically extant queens of Numenor- of which we know seven- we know only two of their methods of death, both of which are drowning (Erendis and Miriel). Some MORE canonical evidence for this story XDD<br/>5. There are many warnings for this story, including suicide, familial death, nightmares, existential horror, misogyny, grooming, cruelty, ableism, abuse; people die by betrayal and through unfair and horrible circumstances. None of these are explored in what I would call an immense amount of depth, but there's a lot of implications hanging about. It’s not an easy story, and it is not a kind story, and it ends- canonically- in tragedy. But I've also explored how women could wield their power- if their husbands were uninterested in ruling, for example- or how women could decide to make others' lives more/less difficult and not involve larger political movements into their ideology, or how women used soft power to keep themselves/their own people happy.<br/>6. @2Nienna2, I sincerely hope you enjoy this story! Your request summary was literally everything I could have ever wanted for a prompt, and I can only hope that I've shared some of my joy in writing this story with you!<br/>EDIT: You guys can now find the edits I've been doing for each individual queen <a href="https://dialux.tumblr.com/tagged/queens-of-numenor-series">here!</a><br/></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>They are grieved and greatly afraid; they are taken, they shall not flee:<br/>
For the heart of the nations is made as the strength of the springs of the sea.</em>
  </p>
  <p>- Algernon Charles Swinburne, "A Song in Time of Revolution"</p>
</blockquote><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Eressecuina - Alone-alive</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>She has a different name in her childhood: it is something else, something softer and gentler, befitting a beloved daughter of beloved Lindon.</p><p>Until, that is, plague comes.</p><p>And then there is nothing left to her save for grief. She buries her family herself, stacking their cairns high with her uncallused palms, and then takes all the gold her mother buried in front of the stove, all the clothes she can carry, her family’s only horse, and she rides out of the village, heading towards the setting sun. She sells the horse at the coast in exchange for a boat and more supplies. Then she gets in, and takes an oar, and starts rowing. </p><p>There are rumors of an island of Men, up north, out west. They are said to be fair and strong; they are said to be kind and beautiful. There is nothing left to her in all of Middle-Earth, so she does not hesitate to leave the land itself behind.</p><p>…</p><p>But she’s overestimated her strength, and underestimated the distance. Her heart burns. Her palms, once uncallused, are now wood-rough and burning. And her supplies are running low. She weeps, great cracking sobs, when it gets cold at night. Her cloak is not enough to keep the teeth of the wind from nipping at her face. She is so <em> young, </em> and so lonely, and so <em> tired- </em></p><p>The boat capsizes.</p><p>Screaming, soundless, she drowns.</p><p>…</p><p>In the water, she dreams: great cliffs crumbling into the sea. The writhing, furious roil of the water as earth slips beneath its surface. The drowning of entire cities, shining and white and beautiful. </p><p>She wakes gasping, and alive: her boat is fine, and her clothes dry. She would think the drowning part of her imagination if not for the salt-burn in her throat. And though she is too young to know of Beleriand’s destruction- her parents are too young themselves, and her grandparents refuse to speak on it- when she wakes, she knows what she has seen. She remembers it, this greatest of destructions that Morgoth ever wrought.</p><p>And then she looks up, and through the mist of the rain, there is some dark thing gleaming in the distance: Númenor, shining Númenor, of the fairest of isles of Men. A new strength in her limbs, she rows towards it.</p><p>…</p><p>She lands at the stone steps. Her skirt weighs her down, but she still scrambles up to touch the soft Númenórean grass, so different from the spiky ones of Lindon. </p><p>A woman catches her arm and draws her up. <em> “Oh,” </em>she says. “Child, child, what is your name? What is- who are you?”</p><p>“Eressecuina,” she says, gasping, hoarse. </p><p>(Gasping for what? For breath? But she is yet alive, and she is not drowned like the mountains she has dreamed of. For relief? But she has not allowed herself to think of the consequences of death. For joy? But how can she feel joy <em> here, </em>now, now, with her family dead and buried and gone-)</p><p>Eressecuina: <em> alone, </em> and <em> alive, </em>because that is who she is: the lonely, living daughter of Lindon’s farmers. </p><p>“My name,” she repeats, the syllables thick on her tongue, “is Eressecuina.”</p><p>…</p><p>(A goddess reaches up out of the depths of the sea and whispers, <em>You. You are mine.</em></p><p>And that- <em> that- </em>is how it begins.)</p><p>…</p><p>She takes whatever work she is given, in the gardens, in the villages, in the inns. </p><p>Her hair is salt-slicked down her spine. Her skirts are caked with sweat and dry seawater. She rather likes the slip-slide-tangle of who she is in Númenor: <em> Eressecuina, </em> alone-alive, flame-torch guttering but still bright in the night. <em> Eressecuina, </em>kinless woman, unwilling survivor, seafaring rebel with more iron in her spine than most swords.</p><p>The sun is hot in the summer. Eressecuina strips to her shift and swims through the sea, gathering pearls, and spends her nights dreaming of a hungry mouth at the heart of the ocean. She wakes and dives into the salt until her tears are swallowed by the sea, and prays it will be enough of a sacrifice.</p><p>…</p><p>Her days are long and slow and gentle, but still Eressecuina’s heart thunders with fear: of the sea, for the sea. Going closer to it only reminds her of what the sea is capable of. But fleeing it feels impossible. The wash of the tides is a distant counterpoint to her own heart, beating in defiance of the death that has already gripped her family.</p><p>Every day, Eressecuina goes down the stone steps at twilight, and sits so her skirt is in the sea, and she swallows and swallows and swallows all of her terror.</p><p>…</p><p>“You come here everyday.”</p><p>Eressecuina tilts her head up to see- Tar-Minyatur. She thinks of scrambling to her feet, of ducking her head in obeisance, but she has the sea around her and the terror of the king is far, far less than her terror of the sea.</p><p>“Yes, my lord,” she says. </p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because it is beautiful,” says Eressecuina. “Don’t you think so?”</p><p>“There are other beautiful things,” says Tar-Minyatur. </p><p>She looks up at him. The sunlight is golden on his lovely features, and Eressecuina is not half so lovely. She knows this. Her hair is ragged from sea-salt, and her skin toughened by the sun. Her clothes are not even rags in the face of his splendor.</p><p>But he has come to her, and she thinks: <em> I left Lindon behind for this. I left Lindon behind for you. </em></p><p>“There are tales that have come to me in Armenelos,” he says slowly, sitting down next to her, “of a woman who came to my isle on nothing but a prayer.”</p><p>“I came on a boat,” says Eressecuina, laughing. “And- yes, I prayed. But they were my muscles that brought me this far, and my hands that were scraped on the oars: it was not <em> only </em>prayer!”</p><p>“I have had dreams of a woman,” says Tar-Minyatur doggedly. “Brown under the sun, flashing in the ocean as a seal. With pearls around her wrists like a queen. With eyes as sharp as yours.”</p><p>Eressecuina pauses. “I am not a queen,” she tells him.</p><p>“Not yet,” says Tar-Minyatur.</p><p>“I have given my life to this land,” says Eressecuina. “I have loved it since I heard of it, long before I ever set eyes on its beauty. I cannot give you half of that love.”</p><p>“What luck,” says Tar-Minyatur, and brings her hands up to his lips, and kisses the calluses like they are a lady’s rings. “For I have loved Elenna since I heard of it- enough to forbear my own immortality- and I cannot give you half of that love either.”</p><p>“I will not leave the sea,” she tells him.</p><p>“Have you dreamed of me?” he asks.</p><p>Eressecuina thinks on her dreams: blood and fire, stars in the sky like a hope and a loss. The weight of a crown that she has known since before she could walk. The pearls she wraps around her wrists now match Elros Tar-Minyatur’s jewels, shining on his own arm.</p><p>“Yes,” she whispers.</p><p>“Then come with me,” says Tar-Minyatur. “Half the year in my court, and half the year by the sea. You may even enjoy Siril, the river which flows from Meneltarma, where Armenelos sits. Be a queen.” He pauses, and then, deliberately, he says, “Be my queen.”</p><p>“They will not accept me,” says Eressecuina. “A pearl-diver as their queen? A farmer’s daughter as your wife? They will riot, as like as not.”</p><p>“These men remember when Beleriand crumbled,” says Tar-Minyatur. “They know what the Valar can do, my lady.”</p><p>(Here is what Eressecuina knows: Beleriand never crumbled.)</p><p>“My name is Eressecuina.”</p><p>“That is not a happy name.”</p><p>“I,” she says, “am not a happy person.”</p><p>“Eressecuina,” says Tar-Minyatur slowly, “do you consent to be my wife?”</p><p>She thinks about everything that she has dreamed. She thinks about Beleriand-ruined. She thinks about stones on her mother’s body. Then she looks up at Tar-Minyatur, and remembers all the sadness she has seen in his past as well: the bird with starred wings, the dragon’s corpse on a riverbed, the swords shattered on bloody blades of grass. All the grief in his past, and the loneliness, and the loss.</p><p>Eressecuina slides her palm into his, calluses on calluses, and leans up to kiss him sweetly.</p><p>“Yes,” she says. </p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Meneldimë - Astronomer</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>She dreams, every day, of her own death. Of clouds covering Meneltarma, and the sea swallowing the world whole. Her parents whisper of her nightmares. Everyone whispers of her nightmares, but nobody ever does anything about them: for there is nothing to be done. Meneldimë is damaged, they say; damaged and shattered and broken in the making. It is said kindly- for was not Arda marred as well, in the making?- but it is said nevertheless.</p><p>It is because of her father’s standing in court that she is ever invited. Tar-Minyatur is, apparently, starting to look for a wife for his eldest son, and though Meneldimë will never be accepted as the queen, she is of high enough rank to join the group.</p><p>There are many girls in court; some are twittering birds, and others are more solemn, and still others have the particular gleam of ambition in their eyes. Meneldimë spends her time sitting next to no one and talking to thin air when she gets tired of biting her tongue. The flowers and stars, at least, are interesting enough.</p><p>“And who are you?”</p><p>Meneldimë flinches. “I’m sorry,” she says reflexively. “I just-”</p><p>“You’re the girl with the nightmares.”</p><p>“Yes,” says Meneldimë, and looks up, and sees- the Queen.</p><p>She is not so lovely as Meneldimë might have imagined; she does not have Tar-Minyatur’s ageless beauty. Rather, Queen Eressecuina is tanned, her skin leathered like she’s spent long years- decades- in the sun. Her arms are covered in pearls of all shapes and sizes and colors, and though she’s rather bent over with her age, her eyes are still bright and beautiful.</p><p>“Your Majesty,” she manages to force out through her teeth, scrambling to her feet. “I didn’t mean-”</p><p>“Tell me about them,” says the Queen.</p><p>“I don’t-”</p><p>“Tell me about them,” she repeats, and sits down, waving Meneldimë to the bench as well. “I hear that you have had them since you were very, very young.”</p><p>“I dream of… stars,” says Meneldimë slowly. “A black sea, dark as the spaces between the stars, coming down and swallowing mountains whole. Swallowing the world whole.”</p><p>The Queen’s hand comes up and seizes Meneldimë’s arm, whip-quick. “Swallowing,” she murmurs. </p><p>“Yes,” quavers Meneldimë. “It is so- large. So cold. Froth like teeth: clouds darker than the darkest of nights. It’s always so <em> hungry.” </em></p><p>“Yes,” repeats the Queen thoughtfully. “Tell me, are you frightened of the sea?”</p><p>“Always.”</p><p>“Meneldimë,” says the Queen. “Do you know how to swim?”</p><p>“No,” she whispers.</p><p>The Queen smiles, and though it is gentle, there is something frightening in it as well: a hint of teeth, a hint of danger. “Will you learn?” she asks.</p><p>Meneldimë thinks of her dreams. She thinks of the sea, and the salt, and the water that glints blue like the shining sky, or the gems in Tar-Minyatur’s crown. She swallows, and she whispers, “Yes.”</p><p>Tari-Eressecuina’s smile widens, but she only pats Meneldimë on the arm, and struggles to her feet, and walks away.</p><p>…</p><p>There is no betrothal announced for Prince Vardamir, but the other girls are all dismissed from court, and though nobody speaks of it, everyone knows what Meneldimë will become in the future. Meneldimë does not meet with the Prince; she spends her days with the Queen, walking the paths of the ocean and returning, dreaming of death and destruction and waking to bright sun. She does not enjoy those walks so much as the Queen might imagine, but she does not complain either. The warmth of the sand alone on her bare feet is enough of a balm for its proximity to the sea.</p><p>“We do not have a Peredhil’s long life,” the Queen tells her. “I will not outlive my husband. But queens always have their own secrets, do you understand me? Things that do not belong with the kings. It is likely that you might not ever see the throne yourself, Meneldimë. You know this, yes?”</p><p>“Yes,” she says quietly.</p><p>“Good. I’ve little patience to teach you to accept the facts of life, along with all this knowledge.” The Queen snorts. “You shall have to devise a method for teaching the next one, and all the rest; I got lucky, in finding you- but if you are to die young, if your sons shall not wed while you still live- you shall have to communicate, somehow.”</p><p>Meneldimë stares. “I don’t know how.”</p><p>“Use your brain. You have seen what burdens you face from childhood itself; would you abandon a child to those dreams? Dreams of drowning. Dreams of death. Beleriand ruined. There are ways to make the dreams easier.”</p><p>“Being with the sea helps,” says Meneldimë. “And- praying, sometimes, when it gets very bad.”</p><p>“So you’ve noticed it too,” says the Queen, satisfied. “Yes. The sea is frightening, but alluring: and as frightening as it is, it can soothe the worst of the terrors, if you wish it. Remember that. River-water will not help you: it must be salted. But if you take blades of grass and weave them into a four-point wreath and then cast it into the Siril’s waters, that can keep the dreams at bay for a time as well.”</p><p>Meneldimë tilts her head up to the sun and relishes the warmth. “If you can keep your nights dreamless,” she murmurs, “why have you chosen not to do so?”</p><p>The Queen’s arm is like a band of golden light around her shoulders. “You know,” she whispers into Meneldimë’s ears. “Oh, my sweet girl, you know.”</p><p>…</p><p>(She does. Terror is comforting. When her nights go too long without the heartrending maw of a ravenous sea, Meneldimë walks to the sea and touches it until she trembles like a leaf in a windstorm. When she is too far from the sea, she looks up at the stars that she is named for and does not look at the stars so much as the darkness between them, the darkness that is reflected in the boundless sea. On those nights, Meneldimë dreams of a sea darker than the night creeping down on her from above, tainting the world black and black and <em> black-) </em></p><p>…</p><p>On her deathbed, Eressecuina calls for her. She grips Meneldimë’s hand close- so strong, still, <em> still- </em>and says, rasping, “You will have to search for the next one.”</p><p>“Yes,” says Meneldimë helplessly. “I don’t know <em> how. </em>How did you know?”</p><p>“The mountains did not crumble,” says Eressecuina. Her fingers are slackening; death has come for her, and its grip is too strong for even this woman, this Pearl-Queen of Armenelos. But still Eressecuina rallies, and grates out, “The sea swallows. The sea swallows all!”</p><p>…</p><p>Meneldimë weds Vardamir three months after Eressecuina’s death. </p><p>She realizes, very quickly, that she will not bear him children: the sea has shredded her womb and her life in its merciless teeth already. There is a growth in her belly, and she will not live to see the turn of the decade. And though Vardamir- beloved of his mother, too-loving of his mother- loves another, he’d wedded her to please the ghost of Eressecuina. Meneldimë will not be much of anything to anyone: the first of Vardamir’s marriages, childless and silent, a shadow of a shade of Númenor’s countless, crownless princesses, forgotten by all and sundry.</p><p>But she has spent a lifetime learning how to survive these terrors, and Meneldimë can aid the next in this line of queens, whenever she must come along. Eressecuina had not known how to read or write, and refused to learn despite all her years in court: she was born a farmer’s daughter, she said, and she would die one. But Meneldimë lives and loves her texts. She is as much a scholar as ever her husband.</p><p>And so Meneldimë writes.</p><p>Reams and reams of books, on stopping the dreams, on worsening them, on how to care for them. Everything Eressecuina ever taught her. Everything Meneldimë learned herself. She crafts her own ink, made of the water of the sea and its animals, and she binds the pages in leather cured in the saltwater of the same sea. </p><p>Her theories. </p><p>Her lore. </p><p>Her history. </p><p>…</p><p>“I will die,” she tells Vardamir, the day that she finishes. Her hands are still ink-spotted. “I will die very, very soon.”</p><p>“Oh,” he says, eyes wide. For all that he is her husband, for all that he is older than her, there is still something innocent in his soul; Meneldimë loves that of him. “You are certain?”</p><p>She thinks back on the hemlock she plucked that morning, after weaving grass into a four-point wreath and casting it into the Siril. The ragged leaves are in the teapot beside Vardamir, steeping to maximum potency. Meneldimë will not die as Eressecuina died, fighting until the end; hers is a quieter grace. Her purpose is finished, and she will not remain for these next months just to die in agony. </p><p>“I wish to be cast into the sea,” she tells him quietly. “Give my body back to the water from whence I came.”</p><p>“Meneldimë,” says Vardamir. “I don’t- this is-”</p><p>“I know,” she says gently, and kisses him, once, on the brow. “I wish we’d had the time to learn more of each other. You deserve joy, my prince: and I shall not stand in your way. I only ask for one thing of you.”</p><p>“Anything,” he says raggedly.</p><p>“If you hear of a girl with unceasing nightmares,” says Meneldimë, “give her these books. Nobody else should read them, do you understand? Only her.” She smiles, small. “It is not for another’s eyes.”</p><p>“Yes,” says Vardamir. “Of course. I will- I will ensure it.”</p><p>Meneldimë smiles again, wider, and then kisses him on the lips for the first time since their wedding ceremony. The sun is bright, and warm on her skin, and the salt of the sea hangs about her like a second cloak. Her heart thrums brightly in her veins. Meneldimë is alive and afraid, but she is not alone: and that, she thinks, is rather enough. </p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Handassë - Intelligence</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>Handassë does not dream of the sea, or the stars. Instead, her nights are taken up by a short, dark-skinned woman with eyes bright as the sun and pearls around her wrists, diving into the sea and weeping only while submerged. Her nights are also taken up by a tall, slender woman with large, sorrowful eyes who writes with ink that runs dark as the midnight sea. </p><p>Amandil is a prince of nothing yet; his grandfather still lives, and will live for a long time. He himself is a beautiful man, older than Handassë by many, many years: his eyes shine gold as a newborn sky, inherited from his mother, Prince Vardamir’s third- and last- wife, and he is a laughing, charming kind of a man. Handassë herself is not much of anything yet either.</p><p>Perhaps it is that which draws them together: the promise of the word <em> yet.  </em></p><p>…</p><p>But more than anything, Handassë is a curious girl. She is not content with the secrets of the court. She is not the kind of girl who likes warmth or the surface of things. She loves <em> depths, </em>and if there is darkness in the depths, if there is evil in the deep, then she will accept it, and she will love it, and she will move past it, untouched by the evil. So, when the rest of the world sleeps, she walks down into the dark dungeons of Armenelos’ palace and the forgotten corners of Armenelos’ libraries and the deep, unplumbed depths of Armenelos’ corridors. </p><p>On one of them, she comes across a stack of books. They are a rough-hewn set; none of the beautiful leather of the other books in the library, not the lovely script, either, nor their fine ink and paper. This is cheap and this is rough, so much that Handassë almost puts it away.</p><p>Then she reads the first line, and the rest of the world falls away:</p><p><em> Here is what is written of Beleriand ruined, </em> writes a rushed, sloppy hand. <em> By all accounts, it crumbled into the sea. </em></p><p>
  <em> Here is what I know of Beleriand: nothing ever crumbled. The mountains never fell. The world never crumbles. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Here is what I know: the sea swallowed it whole. </em>
</p><p>Everything in her tells Handassë to put the book away. Some things can never be unknown. Some truths cannot be unsaid. She should walk away.</p><p>But she has spent a lifetime dreaming of two women, and she has seen these books in her dreams, written by a woman with hair as black as a moonless night and eyes as bright as the stars on a moonless night. Always, <em> always, </em>Handassë has always thought her sorrowful; but now she thinks there is something darker in those depths: terror, constant and unforgiving.</p><p>She has seen these books in her dreams.</p><p>And of all her sins, curiosity has always been chiefest: if Handassë can learn more about that young woman, so beautiful and so afraid, then she will take it.</p><p>She takes a deep breath and falls into her predececssor’s nightmare.</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Rilma - Glittering light</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>Rilma is beautiful indeed: tall and fair, with hair as lustrous as any elf and skin as soft as a flower’s petals and eyes as large and glowing as any lamp. She is the second daughter of the Lord of Rómenna, directly descended from Tindomiel herself. When she swans into Tar-Amandil’s court, she smiles at his eldest son and places her hand in his, and dances with such grace that she knows- <em> knows- </em>that he shall never look at anyone else all his days.</p><p>(If she is fair and lovely, after all, what does it matter that her dreams are of starless nights and seas frothing like a rabid dog?)</p><p>Rilma does not often go exploring. She is as the sun: the darkness comes to her, and is cleansed, for she does not and cannot abide it. But one night she wakes up in a cold corridor, in front of a door painted with a herald that she has never seen before: a crescent moon hanging low over Meneltarma, and does not know how she got there. Her feet are still bare; she is still wearing her nightdress. </p><p>Slowly, she enters it. The room is not locked, but it is long-abandoned. There are a number of cloaks thrown over a dusty armchair. There is a fireplace that she is certain will not light. There is a window as well, and through it the moonlight filters like a silver lamp. And there is a table, and on the table are a number of books, each stacked neatly on top of the others.</p><p>Rilma opens the top-most one.</p><p>It is a diary of some sort, crudely constructed. But the hand within is the gentle, rounded script that she remembers of Elendil’s mother, whose handwritten songs he’d gifted her for their betrothal three months previous.</p><p><em> If you are reading this, </em> she writes, <em> I am dead, and you are the fourth Olórëar in the history of Númenor. </em></p><p>Olórëar: sea-dreamer. It is dreaming in the fashion of the sea: violently and curiously and softly. Not just the sea on a calm morning, but the sea frothing during a storm, the sea after a storm, the sea <em> before </em>a storm. Of a sea like the dream she just woke from: of a sea so achingly torturously beautiful that she does not even mind the burning in her lungs. </p><p>She swallows, and sits, and reads the books until dawn, when she wraps herself in her long-buried mother-in-law’s cloak and steals back upstairs to her chambers. Rilma does not look backwards, and she does not let herself remember the path either: if she is to return, it will be by a power higher than her own.</p><p>…</p><p>As it turns out, she does return, and she does finish the books.</p><p>They are helpful in their own way, Meneldimë’s more than Handassë once Rilma manages to understand Meneldimë’s handwriting. There is advice there, and also secrets; methods to keep the dreams at bay (four-point wreaths tossed into the Siril, or washing one’s hair with saltwater taken under a gibbous moon), how lying with the line of Elros affects the dreams (they fade for three nights and then come back with a vengeance, so never accept the king’s advances on the fourth evening, no matter how much they prod), the duties of an Olórëar (to weep into the sea for a fortnight and a day to soothe it and ensure the storms will not flood Númenor that year- Handassë spent the last fifteen years doing it so religiously that Rilma won’t have to do it for at least another decade; to guide and protect the king and his sons from the wrath of the Valar; to aid the Olórëar still to come). </p><p>It is not that Rilma feels a kinship with these women- Eressecuina was always too brash for her taste; Meneldimë too quiet; Handassë too content to ignore people in the face of reality. If she ever meets them, Rilma does not think that she will like them all too much.</p><p>But they have still passed her their histories with the vain hope of lightening the weight of all of it, and that is a kindness that Rilma had never- could never- have expected.</p><p>…</p><p>Rilma is the first woman since Eressecuina herself to be crowned queen of Númenor. </p><p>Prince Vardamir never gained his crown for any of his wives- whether it was the first who died within five years or the second who died in childbirth or the third, who outlived him- to be named queen. Tar-Amandil’s wife was sickly when Tar-Minyatur finally gave up his scepter, and Handassë died just weeks into her husband’s rule; she died before ever she could be crowned.</p><p>Which leaves Rilma.</p><p>And so Rilma is crowned, and it is glorious and it is glittering: she wraps her arms in pearl, and she leaves her hair a loose fall of lustrous gold as Meneldimë had been in the habit of doing, and she wears Handassë’s finest jewelry instead of her own. She kisses Elendil warmly. She accepts his company of a bed for the night and plies him with enough wine that as soon as the deed is done, she can steal away to her own chambers. And then, bare under the moonlight, Rilma kisses and kisses and <em> kisses </em>Pharalin, the maid that Rilma has loved since she was old enough to know the meaning of love.</p><p>Let the other Olórëar be afraid and be questioning and be fierce. None of them were ever <em> happy, </em>the fools: Rilma has the crown she wanted on her brow and the power she wanted in her fists and the woman she loves in her bed. </p><p>And that is what she intends to write in <em> her </em>diaries.</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Almarian - Blessed woman</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>Almarian loathes the sea. She is raised on the ocean, has salt in her bones instead of marrow, but she hates it. She is raised on the sea, yes, and her hair is bleached as silver as the rime crusted on a boat; but Almarian is raised at her aunt Irildë’s knee as well, and there is no woman who holds more power in her fists than Irildë and her fleet of boats trawling through the seas. Almarian has learned more at Irildë’s knee than anyone can ever guess.</p><p>… </p><p>When she reaches court, she is at a disadvantage: raised away and unused to the vagaries of court life; dressed in strange, unfashionable clothes; without many allies at her side. </p><p>Almarian, however, is clever. </p><p>Far cleverer than anyone believes: not Veantur’s heir in valor, but Irildë’s: Irildë of the flashing eyes and the glittering ships and the beauty of a frothing wave always, always rising. Irildë, who fled her home, Irildë who built her empire on the sea with her own two hands and teeth and unbending, unyielding spine.</p><p>So Almarian smiles even when she doesn’t mean it. Hides the glitter of anger in her eyes with fluttering lashes. And when she manages to get a minute alone with Meneldur, she makes sure to be remarkable in both looks and words: pale and glittering and deliberately contrasting from the golden shine of Tari-Rilma’s beauty.</p><p>…</p><p>The thing is, Elendil wants to placate both his children. Rilma wants to maintain her own power. Silmariën wants power of her own. Isilmë wants freedom. Meneldur wants whatever he’s given, whether they are the scraps of his father’s table or the crown on his father’s head. And now there is Almarian, silver-haired girl of the seas: the girl who never wants to return to the boats for a single day of her life.</p><p>In a family balanced so delicately: in a family with one child born to be a queen, with another child born to be a sailor, in a family where everyone seems happy- there is very little that must be done for war to erupt. Almarian, beautiful and young and sick down to the marrow of her bones of the sea, is but pearlshine and glamour.</p><p>She is ignorable and easily unseen. She is so small: so invisible.</p><p>She is the weight that tips the most delicate of balances over.</p><p>…</p><p>Silmariën fights back: of course she does. She wants her throne. Her father has raised her on stories of her ancestors. She will not go quietly.</p><p>The only problem is that Almarian will not either, and Almarian has spent too long knowing terror not to know how to inspire it. </p><p>…</p><p>No. </p><p>The only obstacle that still stands in front of her at the end of it all is, strangely enough, Tari-Rilma.</p><p>...</p><p>“Tari-Rilma,” she says slowly, curtsying.</p><p>Rilma smiles at her. She is very pretty, still, but her age lends her a dignity that Almarian cannot hope for. The windows are open in her chambers, inviting a breeze that smells of cherry blossoms. There is something <em> different, </em>though, something that Almarian cannot quite put her finger on. In either the chambers or Rilma herself, or-</p><p>“I am glad to see you,” says Rilma calmly. “I wasn’t certain if you would be able to come.”</p><p>“Only the foolish defy the queen’s wishes.”</p><p>“And you are not a fool,” says Rilma, “no matter how much I thought you one when I chose you.”</p><p>“You didn’t choose me.”</p><p>“Meneldur would not have asked you without my blessing.”</p><p>“Do you really think so?” asks Almarian.</p><p>Rilma lifts an eyebrow. “You think you could mean more to him than the mother who birthed him?”</p><p>“I don’t think much,” says Almarian, shrugging. </p><p>“No,” says Rilma coldly. “You don’t.”</p><p>“No,” echoes Almarian, and unsheathes her fangs, just enough for Rilma to know they exist. A fortnight earlier, she’d smiled at Silmariën like this, and reveled in her quiet, smothering fear. “I know, Tari-Rilma. I <em> know.” </em></p><p>Rilma pales, but with fury and not fright. “I am the Queen of Númenor,” she says, magnificently contemptuous. “And you are nothing, you shipwright’s daughter, fishwife’s heir: and I will not see you ruin us. Do you understand me? I will not see you rule this country for as long as I live.”</p><p>Almarian blinks. Rarely has there been a person who could resist her- whether her charms or her threats. But she can adjust. </p><p>Smoothly, she sweeps a bow.</p><p>“May the best woman win, then,” she says, and leaves.</p><p>…</p><p>That night, Almarian dreams of a woman crowned with seashells, and thinks: <em> That’s what was missing. </em></p><p>Rilma’s crown, of dripping pearls and gems. Almarian doesn’t know what it means. She doesn’t know what any of this means: the empty rooms, the fluttering curtains, the pale expanse of Rilma’s forehead. All she knows is the threat to her future, and all the things she will do to stay away from the sea.</p><p>But the woman in front of her is not Rilma: she is, improbably, lovelier, in the ageless way of the sea or the stars or the ancient castles. Her dark hair curls at the edges like froth over waves.</p><p><em> Once and then once more, </em> she says. Her eyes are very large and very green. <em> The tide washes into shore and then abandons it. I warned them. I warned them all of the heartbreak. But what use are the wails of a woman to a king? </em></p><p><em> None, </em> says Almarian wearily. She has spent a lifetime screaming and never being heard: she understands this, down deeper than the depths of her bones. <em> None at all. </em></p><p><em> Hope is a lake without rains to fill it, </em> says the seashell-woman. <em> And we are the first to die of the thirst. </em></p><p>
  <em> I don’t understand. </em>
</p><p>She smiles sadly, and her hands come up to wrap around Almarian’s wrists. They are hot. No: they are <em> more </em> than hot, they are blazing- they are <em> boiling- </em></p><p><em> We, </em> says the seashell-crowned woman, <em> are inevitable.  </em></p><p>Almarian jerks awake.</p><p>…</p><p>Her wrists are burned, red-raw. For another two months, until the scars fade into paler lines, Almarian covers the scars with long, heavy sleeves.</p><p>… </p><p>Life rapidly becomes unfathomably difficult for Almarian. Court belongs to Rilma, and there is nobody whom she hates right now more than her new daughter-in-law. </p><p>But Almarian’s mother had named her well: <em> blessed woman. </em>The Valar do not bless the cowardly or the meek. The Valar’s eyes fall on those who struggle, on those whose lives are full of strife, and it is on them that they offer aid. Fingon had not gotten Manwë’s eagles by staying back in Ered Mithrim: he’d gone to Thangorodrim, he’d cut his own cousin’s hand off, he’d prayed at the death of all hope, and only then, at the death of all he held dear, did Thorondor save them.</p><p>Almarian has spent years on a sea that she dreamt of with a ravening, insatiable hunger: these petty difficulties that Rilma keeps sending in her direction are ridiculously easy to ignore.</p><p>She does dismiss all her woman, though. They do not deserve to be casualties in this war.</p><p>After all, Almarian has always believed herself more a shield than a sword.</p><p>…</p><p>And then, one night, she dreams of the seashell-woman again: standing atop Meneltarma, in a gown of silver and blue, weeping tears into her white hands.</p><p><em> Have faith, </em>she says, and wails, and sobs. </p><p><em> I don’t understand why you weep, </em>Almarian tells her.</p><p>The woman pierces Almarian alive with her fierce, eldritch eyes. <em> It will end in despair, </em> she says. <em> There will be nothing left but this, and even that will be unhallowed and desecrated.  </em></p><p><em> When? Soon? </em>asks Almarian, alarmed.</p><p><em> No, </em> she whispers. <em> Later. In thousands of years’ time. You will not even be a dream of a dream by then. </em></p><p>
  <em> But you mourn for that? </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Is it not worth mourning? </em>
</p><p><em> For the sake of a future desecration, </em> says Almarian carefully, <em> we cannot mourn it now. </em></p><p>The woman studies her closely. <em> You would not unmake this, then, even knowing your inheritance to be dust and drowning? </em></p><p><em> I have drowned in a hungry sea for every night of my life, </em> Almarian tells her. She feels a flicker of that old anger, that old, bright defiance again: the my-life-will-not-end-this-way, the I-want-more-than-this-and-I-will-fight-for-it. <em> This is not new to me. If there are inevitable things, let them come: let them meet my tongue, and my nails, and the knife that my aunt gave me! Let them seem so inevitable against that strength! </em></p><p>
  <em> You are but a woman.  </em>
</p><p>Almarian steps closer to her and presses her palms against the woman’s cheeks. She doesn’t let go, not even when it starts to burn.</p><p><em> I have survived the terrifying before, </em> she says. <em> And I will not surrender to my fate before it is done: I spit on your inevitability. Remember that: there is salt in tears, and salt in sweat, and salt in blood; but the sea does not belong to our defiance.  </em></p><p>…</p><p>Almarian wakes in front of a corridor hung with a very strange sigil. She touches the silvery curve, half-expecting her finger to bleed. When she touches the door, something unlocks: she can step inside. It feels almost like a dream, but right now her palms are burning like the seashell-woman’s cheeks were actually pressed against her flesh yet again.</p><p>Inside of the room is Rilma, crowned and golden and beautiful.</p><p>“Well, then,” she says, when she sees Almarian. “I suppose you should come inside.”</p><p>…</p><p>Rilma explains: Almarian’s dreams are not just dreams. They are- something. Portents. Or something. This corridor is one that only they can walk down. There are ways to make the dreams better, but apparently Almarian doesn’t have nightmares like some of the previous women did. What women? The previous queens. Or: not queens. Women. One per king, and never more, not even for Vardamir who’d had three wives over the course of his life. </p><p>“I don’t care,” says Almarian calmly. Her fingers would twitch for the books, but she is too disciplined for it. Instead, she looks at Rilma. Meets her mother-in-law’s eyes. “I don’t need a set of books to cure me of dreams I don’t want to lose.”</p><p>“No. You want the crown,” says Rilma.</p><p>“I do not want to be shipped off to the seaside. I left my father’s ships and I swore never to return: I will not go back.” She inhales. “If that means that I must ensure a crown for my husband, I will do it.”</p><p>“Silmariën would make a better ruler,” says Rilma softly.</p><p>Almarian smiles. She remembers the seashell woman’s eyes, wide and glittering and dangerous even in the throes of grief. “I make the better queen,” she replies.</p><p>For a long moment, there is silence. Then Rilma bows her head.</p><p>“The Valar have chosen you. I will not go against them.”</p><p>Hope catches in Almarian’s throat like a net full of squirming fish. She waits, because Rilma isn’t done: she <em> surely </em>isn’t done-</p><p>“You will ensure Silmariën does not need for anything.”</p><p>“No,” says Almarian. </p><p>Rilma’s eyes flash furiously. “Do not push your <em> luck-” </em></p><p>“You will,” Almarian tells her, and Rilma sputters to a halt. “Give Silmariën whatever you wish. Give Isilmë the boats she wants. Strip the throne of Tar-Minyatur’s gems: I do not care. Leave me the throne. That is all I ask.”</p><p>“You <em> have </em>learned,” murmurs Rilma, staring at her. “I chose you for your beauty and your silence.”</p><p>“The sea shines silver in the moonlight,” says Almarian, and kisses Rilma on the brow like that moonlight: quicksilver and gleaming and fleeting. “But there are depths to it that no sunlight can penetrate. Remember that of me, Tari-Rilma. Remember who I am.”</p><p>
  <em> Remember what I can become. </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Erendis - Lonely bride</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>It was Tari-Rilma’s last words that named Erendis. </p><p>When she is a child, Erendis thinks often about that day, when Tari-Rilma held Erendis’ mother’s hand and whispered her prophecy, dredged up from the far-diluted blood of Elros Tar-Minyatur’s eldest daughter. It is a cruel name for any child. Who would wish to wed her, this girl named lonely, named alone? What could have driven Rilma to do something so callous?</p><p>This is the only mystery that Erendis wants solved, and nobody ever knows, or: nobody ever tels her.</p><p>...</p><p>Erendis knows what it means to drown.</p><p>She does not need anyone to tell this to her. She does not need the annals of women long dead to tell her how it feels. She does not need this, of all mysteries, solved. </p><p>…</p><p>They name her Tar-Elestirnë for the star on her brow. They name her king because she refuses to be their queen when their king’s throne sits empty. Erendis walks the beaches when it all becomes too much. She weeps into the sea, and it is not to soften the sea’s rage; it is to soften her own wrath. They name her Tar-Elestirnë and Erendis is the only one there when Tari-Almarian gets sick, the only one there when she passes away, the only one there to send her into the ocean as all queens of Númenor have been buried.</p><p>Tar-Meneldur can have his stars and his throne. Tar-Aldarion can have his ships and his whispers of ancient evils. Tar-Elestirnë has done her duty to the world: she has done more than her duty. She retreats to Emerië, and lets the song of the sea fade from her bones.</p><p>…</p><p>(This is a lie.</p><p>The song of the sea never quietens.)</p><p>…</p><p>Erendis loves her daughter. She does not name her Ancalimë- that is Aldarion’s name for her, that is Meneldur’s name for her- but rather Ceuranamië: the new sun born after the solstice. The one that leads to an equinox. The one that brings about calm and steadiness and stability. Ceuranamië of Emerië, star-daughter and star-beloved.</p><p>The morning little Ceuranamië tells her of a dream full of the water’s bloody teeth, Erendis weeps for the first time in years.</p><p>She wanders the hills that night, shivering and soaked to her skin in the rain. She mourns: her little daughter who shall become queen. She curses the throne of Númenor and its evils, written into the skin of too many women over the years.</p><p><em> I never asked for this, </em> she screams. <em> But I would take it a hundred times over! I would take it a thousand times over! Just keep her away from it- keep my </em> daughter <em> safe- </em></p><p>One night, Erendis allows for grief. Only one. </p><p>When Ceuranamië comes down for breakfast the next morning, Erendis awaits her.</p><p>“Listen to me,” she says. “You are my daughter: ever before you are anything else. And all we have we have because we have taken it from the fists of men too proud to let their grip slack, or the gods too foreign to understand us. The path ahead of you shall be dangerous and full of grief; your happiness shall not be great; there shall not be a single person you can truly trust. And so you have a choice here: to collapse before this burden, or to prove yourself equal to its weight.”</p><p>“I’m strong,” says Ceuranamië. Her eyes are beautiful. Every part of her face is beautiful. She is named for stability, she is named for the kind of grace that comes with balance. “I won’t collapse, Ammë.”</p><p>“Then come,” says Erendis. “And let me teach you of the sea.”</p><p>…</p><p>Years later, Ceuranamië leaves for her father’s court: she becomes Ancalimë. Erendis braids her hair as Rilma had favored, and wraps her daughters wrists in shining wool that gleams like so many pearls. </p><p><em> Do not bend, </em> Erendis tells her. <em> Do not break. No matter how the wind howls. No matter how bitter the sea tastes. We, too, are daughters of the great; we, too, have held Númenor safe all our days.  </em></p><p>…</p><p>They see each other when she returns ten years later, white-faced and grim. She insists that Erendis call her Ancalimë, but flinches at every word. There are ghosts in her eyes that hurt somewhere deep inside of Erendis’ breast: she does not need her daughter to explain. </p><p>There are terrors of the sea, as is their inheritance; but there are monsters in the men around them as well, and one fear is not lessened by the other.</p><p>Erendis gives her the space she wishes. She watches Ancalimë walk into the winds and the grass and slowly regain some measure of trust in herself. She bakes bread and spins the wool and wraps warm shawls around her daughter’s shoulders. She sings while herding the sheep, and watches her daughter relax into the song once more.</p><p>Then she goes silent once again, and will not talk, no matter how Erendis prods. Erendis’ only solace is that Ancalimë is not fearful any longer, but rather furious. </p><p>It is when Aldarion sends for Ancalimë and demands she return to Armenelos for her wedding or forsake her crown that Erendis, finally, speaks.</p><p><em> This crown you shall wear is not just your legacy: this is for every woman who has come before you. Eressecuina of Lindon, Meneldimë the Black-Inked, Handassë the Unpromised, Rilma Lauratari, Almarian the Blessed, and me: Erendis Tar-Elestirnë. We who have lived and we who have loved and we who have held this legacy of screams and terror behind our teeth: you are </em> ours, <em> and you shall ever be that. </em></p><p>She holds Ancalimë close, and then she kisses her, on her brow, on each eye, on each cheek. </p><p>
  <em> Go, now, sweet girl. Do what must be done. You shall not bend: you shall not break. For yours is the blood of kings, the blood of heroes, the blood of legends, and you shall outshine them as well. Go, sweet girl. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> My brilliant daughter.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> My radiant, radiant queen. </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>They never see each other again.</p><p>…</p><p>If ever Erendis wrote in the queen’s diaries, she would write this: <em> The sea takes and takes and takes. Remember that the more you give to it, the more it shall want. The most dangerous thing in all the world is to offer it your own heart and then snatch it away. </em></p><p>There had once been a girl who walked the beaches weeping. Then the girl fled the sea and went where it could not follow. </p><p>Erendis <em> would </em>write it, but she cannot, for she learns this lesson all too late. The sea takes. The sea devours. And Erendis has spent too many years keeping herself from the sea’s sharp, sharp teeth. </p><p>…</p><p>(The books do write of her death, but that is because Tar-Ancalimë has written them in defiance of her father’s men’s declarations of Erendis as simply missing. It is her first defiance of her father. </p><p>It is her only defiance of her father.)</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Ancalimë - Most bright</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>There was, once, a time when she was happy.</p><p>That is difficult to remember now. The hours have passed so terribly. The years have not been kind to her. There is nobody alive who lived to see her born. Ancalimë is the eldest by a good thirty years, and she is the finest of the minds by that margin as well.</p><p>There was once a time when she was happy.</p><p>There was once a time when she was happy.</p><p>She must remember that, or all of this will be for nothing.</p><p>…</p><p>She must remember that, because there is nobody left who can remember for her.</p><p>…</p><p>This is all that Ancalimë writes of her mother’s death: <em> she perished in the water. </em>What use is describing the sea’s violence? What use is telling the world of her mother’s despair and her grief? The same song sings in Ancalimë’s own bones, and it will take her soon enough. </p><p>But the truth remains, written out into one book, one salt-cured book hidden in a room deep within Tar-Minyatur’s palace, written out in halting sentences, interrupted and crossed out and inked over: the terrifying ocean; the abandoned sea; the ravenous water. </p><p>It is all that survives of Tar-Elestirnë, Erendis of Emerië that is the truth: how she loved her daughter, and how her daughter loved her; how she gleamed, golden and grieving until the bitter, bitter end; how she died in salt and water, choking, in the pitiless sea. There are many things that Ancalimë can forgive: four centuries is a long time. Ruling for twenty-one decades will teach even the most stubborn of spines to soften, even if Ancalimë has not bent to that weight in all her long years. She has survived so many things in this time; assault, grief, loneliness, pride, poison. </p><p>Ancalimë is not quite so cruel or impatient as she was in her youth any longer, but she finds there are still things that can never be accepted, and they all rest on the water that swallowed her mother whole.</p><p>…</p><p>Ancalimë is, if nothing else, vicious. </p><p>But here are some other things that she is: clever, and lonely, and ambitious beyond all belief.</p><p>(If there is anything she’s learned, it is that the choice is not whether she dies. It is not when. It is <em> how.) </em></p><p>…</p><p>“When I die,” she tells her son, “bury me with the other kings.”</p><p>…</p><p>(Others forgive. Others accept.</p><p>Others choose not to fight against a pitiless sea.</p><p>And then there is Tar-Ancalimë, who watches her mother drown in her dreams for three hundred years, and decides to gain her vengeance against the unliving sea by refusing to sacrifice her body to it.)</p><p>…</p><p>The first woman to be buried at the base of Meneltarma is Tar-Ancalimë. Forever after, for as long as there are Númenórean Queens, they, too, are buried in the same fashion.</p><p>...</p><p>The sea does not forget this.</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Ninquitacirya - Sail that shines white</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>She prays every night of her marriage, kneeling on cold stone until the stars stop shining. </p><p>…</p><p>Every other dream of hers has been shattered as so many pieces of driftwood on a beach. Every other wish of hers has been shredded into ash. Ninquitacirya has only one thing left that she wants in life.</p><p>The <em> fucking </em>throne of Númenor has taken everything else from her.</p><p>…</p><p>She is Agalbeth of Sorontil before she is ever anything else: she is not beautiful, and she is not striking, but she dreams of warm beaches and ravenous seas even when the world is iced over. Tar-Ancalimë hears: she sends for her. She goes and is bound up within Ancalimë’s silver froth courtly gowns, her glittering jewels; corseted and cosseted into a creature even she does not know well enough to name.</p><p>…</p><p>That’s alright, though: Ancalimë names her Ninquitacirya, the shining white sails that once shone across the Belegaer when the armies of Aman came to begin the War of Wrath. Ever after, she is Ninquitacirya, the girl of Sorontil, the princess of Armenelos, the wife of Prince Anárion. Her history does not matter. Who she is, and what she wants, does not matter. Not before Ancalimë’s iron control. Not before the inevitable, despairful dreams that wrap around her whenever she sleeps. There is nothing and there is no one and there is no hope.</p><p>…</p><p>No: there is <em> some </em>hope. The barest dregs of hope. The slenderest of slivers of hope.</p><p>…</p><p>So she prays, not for herself- Ninquitacirya holds no great amount of hope for herself- but rather for the two darling, darling girls she births. She keeps them as separate from Ancalimë as she can; not because she fears that Ancalimë will take them from her, but because she fears the light in Ancalimë’s eyes, always searching Istime and Italimë for a sign of the dreams that haunt Ancalimë and Ninquitacirya, always hungry, always cold. </p><p>Ninquitacirya prays every night that they do not get them. She will give up <em> everything </em>to- know this. To have this promised to her.</p><p>Everything. Anything. All things in all the world.</p><p>…</p><p>And they do not. </p><p>Every woman who became an Olórëar always dreamt of the sea by the time they were ten years of age. Istilmë turns twice that, and Italimë almost eighteen summers, and neither of them have ever even mentioned these nightmares. They are girls: they are happy girls.</p><p>Ninquitacirya will ensure they remain that way even if she has to pay in blood for it. </p><p>Once upon a time, she had been born in Sorontil amids ice and snow. There might be less gold up there, but what her family had sent with her is Ninquitacirya’s own and not anything of her position as royalty. It is not much but it is something, and it is, with luck and with cunning, enough.</p><p>…</p><p>The sea terrifies her. This truth does not change. But she is named for glory and for the white sails of Aman, and Ninquitacirya is a <em> mother, </em>a mother who has spent decades on her knees and praying for a better life for her daughters. </p><p>The sea terrifies her: but Ninquitacirya has no choice.</p><p>…</p><p>Therefore, on one moonless night, she steals away to Rómenna with Istilmë and Italimë, and she hands over the last of her girlhood’s gold to get the boat.</p><p>“Trust in Uinen’s mercy,” she says, before she presses her father’s tarnished silver ring into Istilmë’s palms, before she presses her mother’s lovely emerald necklace into Italimë’s palms. “Row hard and row fiercely. Do not look back: it will not be easy, my darlings, but it will be an easier path than the one that lay before you in Armenelos.”</p><p>“You’re not coming with us?” asks Istilmë, pale eyes wide and shining even in the moonless night.</p><p>Ninquitacirya smiles wanly. “I love you. But I’ve chosen my path.”</p><p>“Tar-Ancalimë will kill you.”</p><p>“Promise me that you’ll survive,” whispers Ninquitacirya. “Promise me that you’ll be happy. I don’t need anything more than that in this life.”</p><p>“She’ll <em> kill </em>you,” snaps Italimë. “You don’t mean-”</p><p>“She will not dare,” she replies. “But if I come with you, she will not hesitate to chase after us. Ancalimë is not cruel, Italimë, but she is focused; and I know how to turn that focus aside from the two of you. And anyhow, there is your brother left here.”</p><p>“You shouldn’t have to do this.”</p><p>“I wish I didn’t have to,” says Ninquitacirya, and then she kisses them, and then she steps out of the sea, shaking from both fear and grief and a love that feels greater, somehow, than everything else she has ever felt in all of her life. “But I’ll do as I must. I love you. I will always love you.”</p><p>She watches as her daughters disappear into the black sea, and only then does she ride back to Armenelos.</p><p>…</p><p>Ninquitacirya is ready for Ancalimë’s fury. She is ready for Anárion’s rage as well.</p><p>What she is not prepared for is to be imprisoned.</p><p>…</p><p>They lock her into the highest tower in Tar-Minyatur’s palace. </p><p>…</p><p>Here, on the clearest days, Ninquitacirya can see the sea, glittering green and silver in the distance. She can embroider if she so wishes, and she does: embroideries of her daughters, embroideries of her own life in Sorontil, embroideries of everything she’s ever done or ever seen or ever wanted in her life. </p><p>Here, on the stormiest nights, no one can hear her scream.</p><p>…</p><p>For a year and a day, Ninquitacirya sits in the tower. She languishes. She sobs and she screams and she hopes, burning alive, for the Valar to grace her daughters with their mercy.</p><p>…</p><p>Two days after a year has passed since Istilmë and Italimë left, it rains so hard she cannot see outside of her window, and she also cannot close it, not with the wind so strong. Ninquitacirya is cold. So cold. Endlessly cold.</p><p>She braves the slippery flagstones to try to draw the latch shut. She has to lean outside of the window to get it. It hurts: the rain pounds at her back and arms like so many hailstones. </p><p>Then the wind shifts and Ninquitacirya loses her balance, and before she can even scream, she’s hanging half out of the window and slowly sliding further out.</p><p>(Others will think she does it purposely. Others will think it was a tragic mistake.</p><p>Neither is true.)</p><p>The slip was a mistake. The choice to stop scrabbling to stay upright was deliberate.</p><p>…</p><p>Ninquitacirya falls.</p><p>She screams, as she’s done all her life. </p><p>Nobody hears her, as <em> they’ve </em>done all her life.</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Turmóndimë - stone-shield</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>Súrion sees her when she’s hunting in Eregion. He tells her that’s when he falls in love with her, years later; this girl with arrows honed finer than any metal of Númenor, this girl with hair like burnished copper down her spine and eyes brighter than the sun when she wishes it. </p><p>The name she chooses from Quenya is <em> Turmóndimë, </em>stone-shield, for she is the protector of her family, and she is the sacrifice of gravel and sleet that her family has offered in return for the peace of being left alone. Well: let Turmóndimë be the sacrifice; she will be good at what she does. She will keep her family safe, even if it means she must enchant this particularly bone-headed man to ensure it.</p><p>…</p><p>“They kept my mother from me,” he tells her, the night before they’re supposed to set sail for Númenor. He looks up at the stars, and he looks very, very young, no matter that he’s many decades older than Turmóndimë. “I don’t remember much of her- she loved the Valar, apparently, and she loved my sisters, and hated the sea, and now- now, no one ever speaks of her. Not even the other courtiers. She’s just been forgotten by everyone.”</p><p>“She loved you,” says Turmóndimë quietly.</p><p>“How can you know that?”</p><p>“Because you said she loved your sisters. You told me that she sent them away?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Súrion,” says Turmóndimë, and sits up enough to prop an elbow beneath her, enough to trace his lovely features. It is not her choice, this marriage that her family and her people have forced on her, but it is not like Súrion is particularly difficult to look upon with his fine, well-carved bones and bright eyes. “I know this: she loved you enough to come back.”</p><p>…</p><p>Later that night, she dreams of a woman with sharp teeth watching her from beneath the waves.</p><p><em> Good, </em>she says, and her voice throbs in Turmóndimë’s bones like something shattering.</p><p>…</p><p>Here is what Turmóndimë does not say on that night: <em> You know what it means to lose your mother. You hate your father, you hate your grandmother, for their actions, for what they robbed from you. And here you are, Súrion of Númenor: here you are, taking me from my mother, taking me from my loving brothers, from my village that will no longer have a strong arm to hunt down the deer in autumn.  </em></p><p><em> Be grateful I do not put an arrow in </em> your <em> eye and feast on your heart, you monstrous, monstrous man. </em></p><p>…</p><p>The one thing that Turmóndimë ensures is that both Telperiën and Isilmo know not to return to the rest of Middle-Earth, no matter how difficult it gets. She will ensure that no other girl comes to Númenor as a sacrifice from her terrified village. She will ensure that, if nothing else.</p><p>…</p><p>The sea does not frighten Turmóndimë: she refuses to be frightened. She has spent a lifetime learning not to let fear dictate her actions. She has spent a lifetime eating her fears alive. </p><p>(Still, she does not ever sail back to her village again.)</p><p>…</p><p>When she dies, Súrion buries her next to the gravestone of his mother who threw herself from the tower. Turmóndimë does not care: she is already dead. What has she to care about now?</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Telperiën - Silver tree of Valinor</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>Telperiën, as a girl on the cusp of womanhood, is in the room when her mother bleeds out in childbirth. It is, she thinks, bitterly and wildly and furiously, such an ignominious end to the woman who had stood like both sword and shield before everyone who dared to stand in her way: blood, dark and black on the sheets, and the slender, gasping baby that costs her her life, and the caustic grief of the healers who could not save her.</p><p>She waits by her mother’s cooling corpse, holding the baby, waiting for it to die. She waits for all the hours of the night, and it is only when dawn comes and she still breathes that Telperiën rises and goes down to her father and Isilmo.</p><p>Her father breaks down in great, heaving sobs when he hears the news. Telperiën has little sympathy for him: they’d all warned him, all of them, not to lay with their mother at her age. The people of Middle-Earth do not age at the same rate as those of Númenor’s kings, and there are consequences to that. </p><p>Instead, she turns to Isilmo, who still has the rangy, coltish look of a boy on the cusp of tipping over into manhood.</p><p>“Her name is Narmiel.”</p><p>“Mother chose that?” asks Isilmo, startled.</p><p>Telperiën had been startled too. But she only nods, now; there are truths that belong to the queens-that-have-been and the queens-that-will-be. She dredges up a smile, though all she wants is to weep, and kisses little Narmiel on her forehead, not minding the sticky blood.</p><p>…</p><p><em> Keep her safe, </em> Turmóndimë had whispered to Telperiën. <em> Protect her. The path of her life will not be easy. She will need to be a wolf to survive it: the sharpest teeth, the cruelest claws. Make sure you are there to remind her to be safe. </em></p><p>…</p><p>Telperiën is there for little Narmiel through the dreams, through the nightmares, through all the howling loss of a motherless girl who sees the ravenous sea behind her eyes.</p><p>…</p><p>They do not wed, the two of them. They stay together; they rule together. They do not look to Middle-Earth: Turmóndimë had admonished them too many times for them to forget the importance of self-determination. And so Telperiën builds grand fortresses of silver and brings the people together, betters the life of all that she can see, aids in large, sweeping projects that reshape the harbor of Rómenna and the terraces of Emerië, and Narmiel walks the paths that Telperiën builds, weeping into the stone and sand and grass.</p><p>…</p><p>Narmiel dies first. </p><p>Telperiën relinquishes her scepter to Minastir the day after her sister stops breathing, and walks into the ocean that should have been her fear the same night.</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Apairë - victory</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>Where Minastir dreams, Apairë <em> rules. </em></p><p>…</p><p>The sea entrances her. The books her ancestresses had written out for her do too: all the wisdom. All the years of desperation and grief and turmoil. She walks up the tower that Ninquitacirya had been imprisoned within and studies the tapestries. She takes the same paths that, once, Meneldimë had walked; learns of the girl that had once lived inside of the unyielding queen that Ancalimë became; laughs at the genuinely hilarious advice that Rilma offers to enjoy life, apparently unaware of how ridiculous they seem.</p><p>But what none of them have done is brave the sea. </p><p>Eressecuina and Turmóndimë crossed it once. Meneldimë and Narmiel walked its shores. Ninquitacirya sent her daughters across it.</p><p>But none of the others have ever understood it like Apairë does: for its teeth are sharp, and its waters are cold, and there is danger in every ounce of its saltwater, but still, those who know its dangers can use it better than anyone else. </p><p>And there is nobody in the entire world that knows the dangers of the sea better than Apairë.</p><p>…</p><p>She ensures she weds Minastir early, while Tar-Telperiën is at the height of her power. She ensures she births a child quickly, a sharp-eyed boy that Apairë names Ciryatan for the ships she raises him on. She ensures she maintains her supporters in Númenor even as she sets sail for Lindon, for Umbar, for Eriador; even as she raises her armies, even as she expands her husband’s kingdoms by the point of her sword and the spearing bow of her ships.</p><p>…</p><p>Fifteen centuries, and only two travels across the Belegaer in all her predecessor’s names. </p><p>It matters not, for Apairë shall make up for their cowardice with her own two hands and her own sword and her own bright, ever-bright courage.</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Tinolimë - Star-vision</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>“Do not take me there,” she whispers.</p><p>Apairë, who has never understood a fear that she couldn’t eat whole, jerks her new daughter-in-law’s chin up to meet her gaze.</p><p>“You will get on that boat,” Apairë tells her mercilessly, “or I will string up your son on these miserable walls.”</p><p>…</p><p>Tinolimë knows she is unwanted by everyone. She knows she is undesired by her family, who tire of her screams and her nightmares; she knows she is detested by her husband, who sees only her plain looks and shrinking, shriveled fear; she knows she is loathed by her husband’s mother, who is the current ruler of Númenor, no matter how much Apairë says she rules in her husband’s name.</p><p>But apparently she has spent her life dreaming Tinolimë’s dreams, and that- that does mean something.</p><p>Tinolimë doesn’t know what it means, precisely, but she’s certain she can use it.</p><p>…</p><p>Tar-Minastir is a kind man, sweet enough for Tinolimë to want to trust him. She doesn’t understand how he ever wed Apairë, who’s about as sweet as the salt-bitter sea. She <em> really </em>doesn’t understand when Minastir tells her that he loves his wife.</p><p>But when she walks the beaches, Tinolimë thinks she understands: there is something to love in the untameable, because of its wildness and not despite it. She can never love the sea herself, but she understands how Apairë can choose to love it instead of fearing it.</p><p>…</p><p>The first voyage, Tinolimë hadn’t understood what it entailed. </p><p>The second voyage, Tinolimë knows, and knows, and knows: all too well.</p><p>…</p><p>“Please,” she tells Ciryatan. Begs him. It’s the one time she attempts it, in all the years of their marriage. “I cannot. Do not make me. Do <em> not-” </em></p><p>“What did my mother say?”</p><p>“You heard her,” says Tinolimë. “You heard what she said, you know what-”</p><p>“You are my wife,” says Ciryatan. “As such, is not my mother your queen? Is she not your ruler, too?”</p><p>“If you make me go back,” says Tinolimë grimly, “you will not like what happens.”</p><p>“Are you threatening me?” he laughs.</p><p>“Of course not,” murmurs Tinolimë, and averts her eyes.</p><p>…</p><p>It had not been a threat. Tinolimë does not make threats: she has learned not to, under Apairë’s ungentle tutelage. </p><p>…</p><p>Here is what Tinolimë knows: the sea is ravenous and it is pitiless. The queens of Númenor have been a sacrifice given unto the sea ever since the first king of Númenor sat on his throne. The dreams of the sea manifest differently in ever woman: some dream of their predecessors, some dream of the sea’s monstrosity, some dream of the sea swallowing mountains whole. Ever since Tar-Ancalimë ruled, the queens have been buried near Meneltarma.</p><p>Perhaps it is because she is not Númenórean that Tinolimë understands that this is not ideal.</p><p>But it is because of Apairë’s own cruelty that Tinolimë will take matters into her own hands.</p><p>…</p><p>They set off, back to the land from which Tinolimë once came. </p><p><em> Back to the land that Apairë conquered, </em>she thinks darkly, and then folds that darkness deep beneath her breastbone so it need never see the light of day again. </p><p>…</p><p>In the end, it’s so simple: a storm picks up, and Apairë is on the stern, as she always is, and all it takes is for Tinolimë to make her way towards Apairë and give her a good shove when the boat pitches at the right time. </p><p>But Apairë is a warrior: she twists with Tinolimë, taking her over the edge of the boat. For a heartbeat, they both cling there, Tinolimë’s hands holding the railing, Apairë gripping Tinolimë’s waist.</p><p>What Apairë forgot is this: Tinolimë is not just the ugly girl who was stolen from her home in Eriador any longer. What she forgot is this: Tinolimë has spent years sitting below Apairë, next to Apairë, behind Apairë, silent and watchful and observant. What she forgot is this: Tinolimë has become very, very desperate. </p><p>Tinolimë does not make threats any longer.</p><p>She makes <em> promises. </em></p><p>…</p><p>Hanging there, shoulders screaming, Tinolimë thinks only of her dreams: the knife-sharp sea, the boiling depths of its waters, the teeth that once shredded apart mountains. She remembers the sea’s wrath when Tinolimë thinks of Ancalimë: the woman who dared to defy it. She remembers the way the roiling of the sea had once echoed in Tinolimë’s ears when she thought of Apairë and her pride and her unseeing unyielding grace.</p><p>Breathless, Tinolimë lets go of the railing.</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Ohtácarë - war, making-war</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>She meets Atanamir when they are seven and clumsy on the seashell-studded beaches of Eldalondë. They are both the descendants of old, old families; their parents, however, have little care for children who don’t yet hold any value for them. </p><p>Well. </p><p><em> Her </em>parents.</p><p>Atanamir’s father lives, yes, but his mother died while he was still in the cradle, on the same voyage that Tari-Apairë passed away on. They say that Ciryatur- still the prince then- returned from that trip a shadow of what he had once been, colder and angrier and hateful in a manner that none of them had ever known before.</p><p>So they are there, now, these two children: lonely, and alone, and learning what it means to love for the first time in their too-short lives. They are on seashell beaches, scraping open their knees; they are on lush grass, rolling and tussling and dirtying their fine clothes; they are in the high halls of kings, giggling with laughter and breaking ancient glass windows with awkward games.</p><p>…</p><p>“I don’t want to be alone,” she tells her father, once, and is banished from his presence for a full month for having the audacity to complain. She repeats the phrase to her mother, and is ignored. She tells her teachers and they scold her for her childishness.</p><p>When she whispers it, breathless, almost soundless, to Atanamir, he reaches a hand out and grips her wrist tight, tight, tight.</p><p>“I’ll be here,” he replies. “Always. For you.”</p><p>…</p><p>The dreams start the night before her tenth birthday.</p><p>When she confesses to her mother why she cannot sleep- her mother, whose mother grew up with Tari-Apairë- there is some quick shuffling and discussions among the adults- and then, to be declared on her fifteenth birthday, Ohtácarë is betrothed to Prince Atanamir. </p><p>Atanamir asks her, again and again, if the dreams are very bad. He offers her sleep-herbs; somehow, he sources the richest wines. But Ohtácarë tells him: the dreams might be terrifying, but they are nothing in comparison to the relief that Ohtácarë has, knowing that she will be with Atanamir until the end of her life, this relief cresting over her head like a wave, coating her tongue in salt.</p><p>…</p><p>They kiss when they’re twenty-five, for the first time; on that seashell beach. Atanamir winds his fingers through her dark hair and kisses her so hard she nearly bends over backwards. The moon shines brightly, and the waves are warm about her feet. It is summer, and it is glorious.</p><p>(Ohtácarë forgets that too often, drowned out by all that came after. But before that, before the path of the rest of their lives was set, she had been happy: she had been content. </p><p>In the briefest of moments that Ohtácarë rests, years and decades later, she tries to remember the uncomplicated joy she’d had. She tries, and sometimes, rarely, she succeeds.)</p><p>Because that night, the first night of what should have been her joyous life ever after, Ohtácarë dreams not of the simple sea but rather a woman, crowned in shattered seashells, with eyes just as uncanny as Almarian had described them in her diaries. </p><p><em> I have been patient, </em>she says. </p><p>Ohtácarë looks at her. <em> Excuse me? </em></p><p><em> I have been patient, </em> repeats the seashell-woman. <em> I have watched and waited, and I have seen your ingratitude- all of your ingratitudes- over and over again. Enough is enough. </em></p><p><em> Enough is- I don’t understand, </em> says Ohtácarë. <em> What do you want? </em></p><p>
  <em> Ancalimë, and then Ninquitacirya, and then Turmóndimë: the chain was broken. The lines have been riven. Tinolimë listened to my warnings. Apairë did not, and you know what was done to her. </em>
</p><p>Ohtácarë doesn’t know. She <em> doesn’t. </em>But when she blinks, her eyes refuse to open: and she sees, like one of Ninquitacirya’s shining tapestries, a young woman clutching the railings of a boat, an older woman clutching the younger one’s waist, both of them screaming, and then, all too quickly: both of them dead.</p><p><em> You killed them, </em>she breathes.</p><p><em> There is a price to these gifts, </em> says the seashell-woman. <em> To look farther than any other, you must offer something in return. </em></p><p>
  <em> I never asked to look this far, though. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> It is not about asking, little one. </em>
</p><p><em> You took, </em> says Ohtácarë quietly. <em> You took from me and the other Olórëar: you stole peace from us, and you didn’t even offer us a </em> choice <em> in the matter, and now you want me to obey you because someone centuries ago defied you? </em></p><p>The seashell-woman’s teeth emerge, sharp as shark-fins, glittering like a thousand stars. <em> Be careful in your words. </em></p><p><em> I’ll be careful when you deserve it. </em> Ohtácarë rises to her feet. <em> If you dislike me so much, rescind your blessing. I’ve no more need of it. </em></p><p><em> This cannot be rescinded, </em> hisses the seashell-woman, stepping closer to her. Ohtácarë refuses to be intimidated. <em> What is done cannot be undone. You belong to </em> me, <em> by blood, by bone, by the weave of your hair! You are mine, you are Maia-chosen, you are- </em></p><p><em> -I do not </em> want <em> any of- </em></p><p>
  <em> -you will learn! </em>
</p><p>She slaps Ohtácarë, open-palmed, across the full of her face, and it <em> burns </em>like nothing Ohtácarë has ever known before. </p><p><em> You will learn, </em> says the seashell-woman in her ear, so Ohtácarë hears her over even her own screams of pain. <em> And this suffering shall be your teacher.  </em></p><p>…</p><p>Ohtácarë wakes to half her face a red-raw mass, scars on top of scars. </p><p>She has a fever; it takes the doctors two weeks to determine whether she’ll survive or not. Everything hurts: she can barely see out of one eye, and if she cries from the pain the salt in her tears make the scars hurt all the worse.</p><p>So she stops crying.</p><p>…</p><p>Three weeks after she is scarred, Atanamir comes to her. </p><p>“Who did this?” he asks, trembling.</p><p>Ohtácarë closes her eyes. </p><p>Eye. </p><p>Her father had named her because she’d been born on the eve of a battle with Umbar, on a dawn that shone bloody over choppy waters. For the past three weeks, Ohtácarë has passed her time thinking of the seashell-woman’s arrogance. Of her beauty, and her power, and her pride: pride she’d demanded Ohtácarë relinquish. Pride that she’d killed Tari-Apairë for. Ohtácarë remembers the burn of her hands on her flesh. She’d been so, so scared.</p><p>“Who <em> dared?” </em>demands Atanamir.</p><p>Ohtácarë opens her eyes and grips his hands close. </p><p>“The Valar,” she says coldly. </p><p>He stares at her. “You mean-”</p><p>“Yes. For your father’s actions. For Tari-Apairë’s actions before her, and other queens before her.”</p><p>“But-”</p><p>Once, she’d been scared. </p><p>Now she’s only furious.</p><p>“They <em> dare </em>to force this on us,” says Ohtácarë. “Who are they to do this to me? Who are they to- to- mutilate me, to burn me, to scar me like this? How dare they!” She throws off the blanket on her legs and gets out of the bed, ignoring Atanamir’s protests. “The Valar tell me that I will recover my beauty if I repent. But I’ve no need for beauty if you love me, do you understand?”</p><p>Atanamir is silent for a long, long minute. Then he says, quietly, “I don’t wish to see you in pain.”</p><p>“Repentance to that heinous, heartless Maia will be more painful than living with this,” Ohtácarë declares. </p><p>“Then,” murmurs Atanamir, and lifts her palm to his lips, and kisses it, sweetly soft, eyes never dipping away from her, “far be it from me to ask for your repentance, my lovely, lovely war-queen.”</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Condiel - Daughter of princes</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>She is the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of Istilmë, and the memory of sea-dreaming still lives on in their line like a thread of silver, binding them close. It’s why Condiel knows what she dreams of, when she sees the sea closing over the land: it’s why she knows that the waters her mother fishes on, trawling through shallow estuaries, had once held mountains great enough to block out the sky. </p><p>It’s why Condiel leaves for Armenelos.</p><p>…</p><p>Ninquitacirya hadn’t wanted her daughters to know the pain of the dreams. Her daughters had decided the dreams were devilry: to be culled if they ever showed in their line. </p><p>When Condiel dreams of the death of Beleriand, her mother pales.</p><p>(It’s only later that she learns that her mother didn’t pale from fear, as Condiel assumed, but rather anger, and, perhaps, determination.)</p><p>But Condiel is gentle and kind and lovely and lovable. </p><p>Her mother holds the knife over her head, glinting silver and deadly, and is pushed aside by her own sister.</p><p>“There’s a boat at the lower end of the wharf,” she tells Condiel, after knocking Condiel’s mother out on the snow. “Take it. Run, Condiel! And don’t return, no matter what! Not ever!”</p><p>…</p><p>A true daughter of Istilmë would have died under her mother’s knife, but Condiel has never known a cause she would die for. </p><p>And she finds that between the merciless sea and her merciless mother, Condiel knows which to have greater pity.</p><p>…</p><p>Condiel docks at the same place that Eressecuina had once landed, and her skirts are just as saltstained and sweat-ridden as hers had been. In fact, she looks remarkably <em> like </em>Eressecuina, like the woman she dreams of, dark skin and bright eyes and a smile like the slash of a broken conchshell.</p><p>The difference is this: Eressecuina dragged herself up those steps.</p><p>Here, there is another woman awaiting her: dressed in clothes that mimic battle armor, the silk cut sharp as steel and iron. Here, Ohtácarë pulls Condiel up, and she lifts her chin, and she looks deep into Condiel’s eyes, and she says, quietly, <em> You are welcome here, daughter-of-Númenor.  </em></p><p>…</p><p>Stories talk of how Tari-Condiel collapsed into Tari-Ohtácarë’s arms, weeping.</p><p>They do not mention how a young woman, bedraggled, alone, lonely beyond all reckoning, looked the queen who chose to defy the Valar in the eye, and asked, too soft to be heard by any other ears: <em> You will not promise safety? </em></p><p>Nor do they mention Tari-Ohtácarë’s answer: <em> There is no safety in Númenor any longer, not for the god-chosen. But we are learning to choose ourselves, now, and we pray that one day- one day- that will be enough. </em></p><p>…</p><p>It is not: it never will be.</p><p>But who are they, if they do not try?</p><p>…</p><p>She is the third woman to cross the Belegaer and come to Númenor from Middle-Earth. Over the years, Condiel becomes Ohtácarë’s right-hand. She weds Ancalimon, and births him two beautiful, beautiful children that she names for the brightness that once shone off her own mother’s knife, and the moonlight that led Condiel across the heartless sea. To little Telemmaitë and even littler Isilmë, she teaches her own tongue: not the Quenya of Númenor, but the Adûnaic of her mother’s people.</p><p>…</p><p>It is not devilry; she is certain the dreams are not that. But there is something terrible and grand and horrible in them anyhow, and Condiel understands why Ninquitacirya had sent her daughters away, why Istilmë and Italimë had called for any of their descendants who displayed such dreams to die.</p><p>…</p><p><em> Daughter of princes, </em>says Ohtácarë, when she is dying.</p><p>Condiel presses a kiss to her forehead, where the red scars curl into her hair. <em> War-Queen, </em>she returns affectionately.</p><p>
  <em> Do not let this die with me. </em>
</p><p><em> Never, </em> says Condiel, and remembers how desperately she’d wanted to live when she fled her home. It’s the one thing she’ll never forgive of the Valar’s visions: how they’d let her dreams be so terrible, how they’d dared to make her doubt the preciousness of her own life. <em> Never. </em></p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Melúviel - Honey-daughter</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>Tari-Apairë had been a conqueror queen who loved the sea.</p><p>Melúviel, with her husband who is weaker than Tar-Minastir, with her love of the sword, with her yearning for the dancing of the waves and the roll of wood on the unsteady surface of the sea; Melúviel, with her tongue sweet as honey, with her eyes as fierce as Apairë ever managed; Melúviel, with her kingdom spread at the point of Apairë’s own sword: Melúviel will rule ever-greater, and bring Númenor to ever-higher heights.</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong>Vanimeldë - Beautiful beloved</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>The truth is that Vanimeldë does not love Herucalmo.</p><p>They spend years dancing around it- Vanimeldë reads Telperiën’s grief, Narmiel’s suffering, Ancalimë’s unyielding, brittle strength in the salt-cured diaries given to the Olórëar, and she is terrified of what it means to wed Herucalmo, who is louder than her and brighter than her. Vanimeldë, with her salt-silver hair and her jewel-blue eyes and her long, lean height: she could almost be an elf. That’s what people whisper of her mother, sometimes; how Melúviel the Prideful must have chosen an elf to father her daughter, for surely no other would have been good enough, not even Tar-Telemmaitë, too-greedy for mithril to even notice his wife’s ever-higher greed. Vanimeldë hears all of it, of course, and knows that anyone to wed her will wed her first for her crown and then for her beauty and only later, after, for <em> herself. </em> She almost refuses her grandfather’s decree, almost <em> defies </em>Ancalimon the Great, thrice over, and almost runs away to Umbar for it.</p><p>But in the end, Herucalmo comes to her garden and he holds her hand, and he kneels before her and he says, “Do not be afraid.”</p><p>“You do not know me,” says Vanimeldë gently, and permits her hand to rest on his dark hair, white as a star against the midnight sky. “It will be better for everyone if I am to leave. For Númenor, for you, for me- surely, <em> surely, </em>you see that?”</p><p>“You are the only daughter of the king’s son,” murmurs Herucalmo. “What shall you do in Umbar, my lady, that cannot be done here- and greater for the grass on which it will be done?”</p><p>“I am not meant to be a queen. My passions lie in wordcraft and the arts: not war. I am my father’s daughter, Herucalmo! And I cannot change it! I’ve not predilection for ruling, not like Tar-Ancalimon!”</p><p>“Your father,” says Herucalmo, tipping his head up to look at her, “chose to wed a woman who could do what he cannot.”</p><p>Vanimeldë stares at him. “You do not mean-”</p><p>“I do not offer you love,” he replies. “I do not offer you kindness. I do not offer you the kinds of romances that you hear of in the plays you enjoy so much.” Vanimeldë flushes, but he continues grimly: “I offer you respect, Princess Vanimeldë, and I offer you the strength of my sword and the shield of my mind. Tari-Melúviel shall rule Númenor when Tar-Ancalimon passes, and we all know it; let me do the same for you.”</p><p>…</p><p>Perhaps, in another world, Vanimeldë would have refused Herucalmo and fled anyways. Perhaps she would have believed in the high romances, in the best, fiercest stories; perhaps she would have decided <em> I-will-have-true-love-or-nothing-at-all.  </em></p><p>But in this one, Vanimeldë settles for Herucalmo.</p><p>…</p><p>Here is the difference, though, between a king letting his wife rule in his stead, and a queen letting her husband rule in her stead: one is done because there is no choice, and the other only begets question after question after question of why the queen is necessary in the first place.</p><p>…</p><p>That becomes dangerous, if ever a man lets those whispers into his heart.</p><p>…</p><p>Those first years are joyous enough; they see so little of each other. But slowly, Vanimeldë realizes that there is an undercurrent running through her world: Herucalmo, Herucalmo, Herucalmo, wherever she goes, whatever she says. Disdain and fear. Hurt and rage. Her own mother is in Umbar, re-establishing control over a colony that rebelled, and Vanimeldë’s father has not the political acumen to control anything here.</p><p>Well. Neither does Vanimeldë.</p><p>Instead, she goes to Herucalmo and asks him for a child. A son- or a daughter- will be distraction enough for the entire court. It only takes two months before her courses stop, and another month after that she reveals her condition to court, and for another period of time she is happy.</p><p>On the night she gives birth to little Alcarin, Vanimeldë loses enough blood to start dreaming of beings that aren’t there: her mother, Tari-Melúviel, who’s still not returned from Umbar despite all the missives; Tari-Handassë, who’d been clever and curious and kind; Tari-Narmiel, who touches Vanimeldë’s sweat-damped hair and soothes her through the worst of the pain. Then even that goes away, and all Vanimeldë sees is red-black-black-<em> black- </em></p><p>…</p><p><em> There is no joy that lasts, little girl, </em> hisses the frothing, furious sea. <em> Haven’t you learned that yet? </em></p><p>…</p><p>She wakes to her mother holding Alcarin, standing in the sunlight spilling through the open windows.</p><p>“Mother?” croaks Vanimeldë, certain she’s still dreaming.</p><p>Her mother turns to look at her, honey-golden hair gleaming still, a smile on her lips. “Ah, Vani. Your son is absolutely gorgeous. Takes after you, which I’d be grateful for.”</p><p>“Oh, Ammë,” says Vanimeldë, and bursts into tears.</p><p>…</p><p>Later, years later- Vanimeldë goes to Umbar. The news of her mother’s death has just reached court, and it’s only because of the flutter that the court is in that Vanimeldë has managed to escape Herucalmo’s control so easily. But she manages it, and she sets down in the colony that her mother had once squashed a rebellion in, with Alcarin- now almost an adult- beside her.</p><p>Three weeks later, she leaves.</p><p>“My queen!” shouts the ship’s captain the evening after they take off from Umbar. He’s white-faced and shaking when Vanimeldë clears her head enough to look at him. “I- we don’t know- it’s- it’s all on my shoulders- but-”</p><p>“Spit it out,” Vanimeldë tells him.</p><p>“Prince Alcarin is nowhere on this boat!”</p><p>“I know,” says Vanimeldë. Her hand tightens on the boat’s railing, bile sour on the back of her tongue. “He remains in Umbar.”</p><p><em> He remains, </em> she doesn’t say aloud, <em> safe from my husband’s poison tongue. </em></p><p>…</p><p>Because that is what Herucalmo <em> is, </em>and Vanimeldë cannot believe she ever loved him for promising to keep her from the rigors of royalty. She cannot believe the foolishness of that girl in the courtyard, one hand on his dark hair, hope in her throat like a vice. </p><p>She lands back on the glittering shores of Rómenna to the news of her father’s death. Herucalmo tells her right there, amid the sand and the crash of the waves, and it takes all of Vanimeldë’s strength not to shudder at the slick slide of his hand over her wrist, at the cold, cold terror that sits in her bones when she’s this close to the water.</p><p>(Who had she braved it for, if not for her son?)</p><p>But now, she stands before a kingdom of bowed heads, all of them kneeling and awaiting her first order as Tar-Vanimeldë, sixteenth ruler of Númenor.</p><p>“Stand up,” she says, and presses her hand to Herucalmo’s soft hair for the briefest of moments. Vanimeldë closes her eyes; she imagines, briefly, that she’s back in the courtyard, that she’s as young and hopeful as she had been then. Then she opens them, and looks directly at Herucalmo, and says, “Alcarin remains in Umbar,” and sees the way that Herucalmo’s eyes go cold, flat and reflective as a dead fish, and sighs.</p><p>…</p><p>Every night that she slept on that boat, Vanimeldë had dreamt of the sea: and, there, in a crown of seashells, a woman with large, grieving eyes. </p><p><em> There is no joy to be had in this ending, </em> she’d repeated, over and over again. <em> Can you not feel it? The grandeur- the beauty- the honor- all of it tarnished, all of it faded. </em></p><p><em> We are not what we were, </em> Vanimeldë had replied, once. <em> But that does not mean we are nothing. </em></p><p>
  <em> Not yet. </em>
</p><p><em> No, </em> Vanimeldë had said, and would have wept, if not for that the tears would taste of salt. <em> Not yet. </em></p><p>…</p><p>She writes. She writes to get out of her head, to stop tasting tears and the ancient, terrifying sea across the flat of her tongue. She writes to get Herucalmo’s thousand petty grievances out of her mind. </p><p>…</p><p>Once, veiled and disguised, she sneaks into a theater. Sits in the back. Watches not the actors, but the other people in the audience: their rapt faces, the times they laugh, the times they look disgruntled.</p><p>At the end, just before she’s leaving, a woman sighs. </p><p>“It’s good,” she says. “Tar-Vanimeldë’s plays- they’re <em> always </em>good. I just wish they’d end differently, you know?”</p><p>“Yes,” says her companion fervently. “Somebody always drowns, haven’t you seen?”</p><p>“And that’s if we’re <em> lucky- </em>they used to be even worse. Wave falls, everything washes away. And always at the end, too! Never in the beginning.”</p><p>They move out of hearing range, and Vanimeldë is left to stare at her own two hands, inkstained and pale and long-fingered. Left to think: <em> I hadn’t even realized. </em></p><p>Because she hadn’t.</p><p>She hadn’t realized that there could be an ending that wasn’t a drowning.</p><p>…</p><p>It is not a war between Vanimeldë and Herucalmo: or, at least, not any kind of a war that Vanimeldë has ever heard of.</p><p>It is the kind of war fought over long, grinding years and quiet, vicious whispers. Every night that Vanimeldë hears the unkind rumors or feels so tired of any of this, she remembers how <em> frightening </em>Herucalmo had been, over and over again, and that had been when Vanimeldë was not Ruling Queen and still had her parents, still had supporters. </p><p>
  <em> I brought a snake into my home, and now it rests on my breast, poison on its fangs. </em>
</p><p>But a snake only kills when the person it lies upon flinches. And Vanimeldë, sweet, sweet Vanimeldë, star-haired Vanimeldë, sky-eyed Vanimeldë: the least that she can do now is remain still.</p><p>…</p><p>It works for a while. For longer than a while.</p><p>But then Alcarin- no longer young, no longer afraid, the stupid boy- returns to Armenelos.</p><p>…</p><p>And he doesn’t return alone: with him, he brings a woman of Umbar, the dark-skinned, light-eyed daughter of the son of the man whose rebellion Vanimeldë’s mother had put down.</p><p>“Please,” she tells Vanimeldë, “call me Pondarímë.”</p><p>Vanimeldë pauses, absorbing that. “A strong name.”</p><p>She lifts her head proudly, like a falcon searching for its prey. “I would hope such a choice would please you.”</p><p>“You are both young,” says Vanimeldë quietly. She looks over at Alcarin, whose hair catches the moonlight to shine bright as mithril even in the dim shadows of her chambers. “It is not safe for you here, Alcarin, much less for anyone you bring here. Surely you understand this?”</p><p>“I know that you’re afraid,” he says.</p><p>“If you are not afraid,” Vanimeldë says harshly, “you’re as stupid as I was.”</p><p>“Mother-”</p><p>“Why would you return?” she demands. “This is- this is <em> madness- </em>this is-”</p><p>“We need your help,” says Pondarímë. She straightens up, but her hand is tight on Alcarin’s and that’s all that Vanimeldë can see. “We need your blessing.”</p><p>“No,” says Vanimeldë. “No, <em> no: </em>do you think they will accept this?”</p><p>“Who, Mother? Who would defy your order?”</p><p>“Your father!” snaps Vanimeldë. “Do not pretend to be stupid! Your father will- he will silence you, he will destroy you; he will think this a rebellion against him and he will make you pay for it! And I have done everything in my life to keep you <em> safe, </em>and now you’re here?”</p><p>“It’s love,” says Pondarímë. “Would he think love to be a rebellion, Tar-Vanimeldë?”</p><p>Vanimeldë’s lip curls. “Yes,” she says. “Yes. Has Alcarin not explained anything to you?”</p><p>“Don’t speak to her that way,” says Alcarin lowly.</p><p>“In what way?” Vanimeldë asks. “As if she doesn’t know who she’s dealing with? Your father-”</p><p>“You are the Ruling Queen!”</p><p>“And I am nothing but a puppet!”</p><p>He goes still, face whitening a little. </p><p>Vanimeldë turns away. Walks to the balcony, and looks up: to the moonlight, shining silver down on her. Half a century previous, she’d left him in Umbar and stood on a boat, balanced between terror for her son and terror of the seas. And now he returns to her, broader and stronger, but still as beautiful as ever. Her <em> son, </em>whom Vanimeldë has always loved so dearly, even when it was easier to love him from afar.</p><p>“Are you happy?” she asks, without turning.</p><p>For a long time, there is no answer. Then Alcarin whispers, “Yes.”</p><p>“Tell me what she is to you,” says Vanimeldë. She keeps her eyes closed; for this, she trusts her ears to know the truth ever more than her eyes. “Tell me how she loves you.”</p><p>“She is- everything,” says Alcarin quietly. “My heart, my steel and my soul. We are as- twinned swords, Ammë, or the balanced weights of a scale. Less if we are apart, and greater by far for being together: but not the same. The shadow of the night and the moonlight. The glare of the sunlight and the relief of the darkness. Pondarímë is- is <em> everything, </em>and more. I am better- far better- for knowing her.”</p><p>Vanimeldë opens her eyes, but she still cannot see anything: the tears blind her. </p><p>
  <em> Tears, and the sea, and the rain that drowns us alive. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> There is never a joy that lasts. </em>
</p><p>But when she turns around, the hope on Alcarin’s face, blazing brighter than a thousand suns, slashes the bitterness on Vanimeldë’s tongue to ribbons, then to dust, then to nothing at all.</p><p>“You do not choose an easy path,” she murmurs. “But there has been nothing that says that love cannot live alongside difficulty. Oh, Alcarin. My poor, poor boy. Of course you may wed her. I’d wish nothing else for you but the greatest, grandest joys!”</p><p>Alcarin collapses before her, grabbing her hand in sheer gratitude. Pondarímë sits down hard on one of the chairs, looking shaken.</p><p>“Take this,” says Vanimeldë, and removes the pearl bracelet that- legend has it- Tari-Eressecuina herself dove for from the sea, and presses it into Pondarímë’s hands. “And go.”</p><p>“Ammë-”</p><p>“Your path will be difficult,” she tells them. “But not without brightness. Go, Alcarin: go, and do not return.”</p><p>…</p><p><em> This joy will not last, </em> wails the seashell queen that night. <em> None of this shall last! There is death and hate and- </em></p><p><em> And if I know this joy to be fleeting, </em> says Vanimeldë, silencing the queen utterly, <em> then I know my grief to be fleeting as well. </em></p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Pondarímë - Strong-shout</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>She has three children with Alcarin. She travels the seas with Alcarin. She learns to be a leader with Alcarin.</p><p>She dies in his arms.</p><p>…</p><p>Well. </p><p>Pondarímë is much more than that: she is the daughter of the son of the man who led the best rebellion against Númenor. It took Tari-Melúviel herself to put it down. The stories of Melúviel and Pondarímë’s grandfather, Ruinir the Great, still live on: how the Queen’s ships crested over their city’s fortifications like a sea of fire; how she told Ruinir’s personal guard that the first man to bring her his head would be made a lord of Númenor, only to be rebuffed so fiercely she’s impressed by their loyalty and spares them; how she had hair like the sun at high noon, so gold it hurts to peer too closely.</p><p>And, while Pondarímë is still a child, her grandson comes to their city.</p><p>He has hair like starlight or silver; his eyes are so fine a blue she cannot describe them but to call them breakable. He is as glorious as his name calls him.</p><p>But Pondarímë is beautiful as well: thick, lustrous hair dark as the spaces between stars, and eyes that shine like bonfires, and an impressive mind to pair with the beauty. </p><p>…</p><p>“I will not teach you,” says her father. “I will not let any of my men teach you.”</p><p>“But you won’t take it from me?”</p><p>He lifts an eyebrow. “Do you think you can learn swordplay by yourself, little one?”</p><p>“Will you take my sword from me?” she insists, and her father laughs.</p><p>“No,” he says. “No, I will not.”</p><p>That very afternoon, she walks over to the shadowy tower in which the White-Haired Prince lives, and picks open the lock on his door, and says, to his wine-drenched body, “Will you teach me?”</p><p>…</p><p>For a girl brought up on the sands of Umbar, it is not unheard of a fear of deep water; but Pondarímë’s, certainly, goes deeper than most. Still, when Alcarin takes her by the hand and leads her up the plank, she sees the shine of the sea in his eyes, and she does not fear it quite as much ever after.</p><p>…</p><p>The only glimpse that Pondarímë ever has of Númenor is the time that Alcarin takes her to meet his mother and get her blessing. They leave for Umbar immediately, Pondarímë’s wrist heavy with Tari-Eressecuina’s pearls, and though Pondarímë would have liked to see the glittering towers and mountains that Alcarin had mentioned to her, the promise of travel by sea leaves her perturbed enough to retire early. And they never return to Númenor, not for all the letters that Alcarin’s father sends him, though he nevertheless stores them neatly in a box by their bedside.</p><p>…</p><p>It’s a fever that takes her away. It’s a fever that ravages their entire city, the cities near to them, all the cities that sent messengers before closing their borders.</p><p>...</p><p>Pondarímë grips him closely, grips him close, when she’s certain she will die: she refuses to let her children close and would send Alcarin away, too, but he doesn’t listen to her and she won’t waste the last of her breath protesting his love.</p><p>“Keep them safe,” she whispers. “Tell them of your love, Alcarin, and do not mourn me overmuch: you deserve to have joy in your life. You deserve to have <em> everything, </em>do you hear me?”</p><p>“Not without you,” he whispers back. “This- I knew our time to be short, but not like <em> this, </em>Pondarímë, my little- my little stone: not like this!”</p><p>“Fifteen years we had,” says Pondarímë. “Fifteen happy, glorious years. Remember that.”</p><p>“You are a queen,” he says, weeping openly. “You are my only queen.”</p><p>Pondarímë only knows it to be tears because she can taste the salt: her flesh has gone too hot, now. She thinks it’s rather appropriate: salt, like the sweat that gleamed on her face when she sparred with Alcarin, like the sea she’d once feared, like the grief they’ve spent fifteen years battling back.</p><p>“I am Pondarímë of Umbar,” she says gently. “Pondarímë, wife of Alcarin. Pondarímë, mother to three: and if I die here, my love, I do not die unpeaceful.”</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Uruvoitë - fiery</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>She is there when Prince Alcarin finally returns home, with a boy at his side and a face white as bone. She is there, and she does not want to be, but she is the only child brave enough to go up to the dark-skinned little boy and ask him who he is.</p><p>“My mother,” he says grimly, “is dead. Father will have her buried at Meneltarma.”</p><p>“Where the other queens are buried? Herucalmo will never stand for it!”</p><p>“I’d like to see him try,” says the boy, with that same quiet, unsettling kind of intensity.</p><p>“I don’t understand,” says Uruvoitë. “Who did you say you are?”</p><p>The boy turns to her, and his eyes are a peculiar shade of blue-gold, gleaming like the metal on Meneltarma’s doors, and the sea, and the flowers that could be seen in Emerië, sometimes, at the height of summer; and Uruvoitë’s stomach turns over, swooping like a bird through the sky.</p><p>“Belzagar, at your service,” he says. “Eldest son of Prince Alcarin.”</p><p>“Oh,” says Uruvoitë, and faints away.</p><p>…</p><p>Uruvoitë is named not for her temper- she’s inherited her aunt’s temper, and she’s rather a patient person, all told- nor for her abilities- she’s definitely burned more than a couple things that shouldn’t be on fire, but what else is someone named <em> fiery </em>to do?- but rather for the glory of red hair running down her back.</p><p>…</p><p>So: she’s there for Prince Alcarin’s return, and she’s there for his coronation, and she’s also there for Herucalmo’s quiet, roiling battles with his own son, barely tempered by Tar-Vanimeldë, and she’s there for the day that Herucalmo finally, infuriated, orders for his grandson to be wed.</p><p><em> If you wish to leave, </em> snarls Herucalmo, <em> you’ll wed Belzagar off.  </em></p><p><em> He’s a child, </em> Alcarin exclaims. <em> You cannot- </em></p><p><em> I will not let you leave without promises to return, </em>says Herucalmo, implacable.</p><p>And in this, at least, though there are further battles and anger, Alcarin does give in, and Uruvoitë is wedded to his son within the year.</p><p>Belzagar and Alcarin leave the day after her wedding it seems that, no matter what Herucalmo had desired Uruvoitë bring to the union, it is not enough to keep her husband in Númenor.</p><p>…</p><p>Uruvoitë little cares: she hadn’t desired a husband before this, and she doesn’t desire one now, though Belzagar does provide a decent answer to her mother’s entreaties for her daughter to wed.</p><p>Belzagar is not a cruel husband, even if he doesn’t care for her much and doesn’t hide that fact well. On the brief times he returns to Númenor, he offers her some presents- a pearl, a book, a pretty dagger. Uruvoitë, in turn, is dutiful for those weeks he is there, the perfect wife and princess she can manage to be. She even writes of Belzagar's mother into the salt-cured books</p><p>She only finds out she’s with child three weeks after Belzagar has left- Calmacil, now, the name he’s taken after proving himself a remarkably adept soldier- and he rarely returns in one year, much less nine months, so Uruvoitë goes through the process alone: and despite all her ladies’ mutterings and her mother’s anger, she does not <em> blame </em>Calmacil; she’d known what kind of a man he was before she was ever wedded to him, and hoping he’d be different does not mean she’s disappointed when he does not exceed expectations.</p><p>…</p><p>It’s when Tar-Vanimeldë dies that, as they say, everything goes to hell.</p><p>…</p><p>Consort Herucalmo is maneuvering himself into taking the throne for himself, and everyone who’d care to send a message to Prince Alcarin- <em> Tar- </em>Alcarin, now, surely- is being too closely watched. Uruvoitë is not, but that’s because everyone thinks her the poor, forgotten pawn of Herucalmo and Alcarin, used and tossed aside once her influence was proven to be minimal.</p><p>The messenger pigeons are in a lighthouse, on an island half a mile from the sea: the hungry sea, the sea that Uruvoitë dreams of swallowing the world whole, the sea that she sometimes wakes to, frothing at her fingertips and frightening.</p><p>But no man should have to miss his mother’s burial.</p><p>Uruvoitë is named for her hair: for its luster, for its beauty, for its uniqueness.</p><p>But there is nothing that says she cannot take that meaning and make it her own. Fire fears the water, yes, but there is a fear of the water to flame as well: and Uruvoitë, beautiful Uruvoitë, furious Uruvoitë, righteous Uruvoitë: she will not surrender to her fear first.</p><p>She has her heart in her throat the full time she rows over to the lighthouse, and it doesn’t get better from there: Uruvoitë must release the birds, and pray nobody realizes <em> who </em>released them—</p><p>And, of course, return, on the flimsy boat, to the safety of land. </p><p>It’s the one kindness she offers to her husband, in all the years of their marriage: the risk that she takes, in leaving in the first place, yes, of course, but more than that is the bravery that she must gather around her shoulders to go so close to the water, no matter what Meneldimë’s hand advises. </p><p>Calmacil never knows it.</p><p>Neither of them show up for the funeral.</p><p>…</p><p>Uruvoitë surrenders her children to Consort Herucalmo’s- now Tar-Anducal- care, and she retires to Emerië, where rumor has it she lives in the same little hut that Tar-Elestirnë once inhabited.</p><p>It’s far enough from the sea that she does not need to feel afraid: and Uruvoitë will exchange the sea’s wrath for a few short, painful moments at the end of her life for the decades of peace she gains now. She will do it without a single moment’s hesitation. She <em> does </em>do it, and when she breathes her last- peacefully- it’s Tar-Alcarin, then, come into his own, that buries her at the base of Meneltarma, quietly, without much celebration.</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Elénniel - Daughter of stars</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>When she is sixteen years old, Elénniel wakes up in an unfamiliar hallway, full of dust, her bare feet freezing on the flagstones. She stumbles into the first room, praying it has a working fireplace, and finds it neatly stocked with tapestries and books that don’t look anything like the books in any other library that she’s ever seen.</p><p>She hurries away.</p><p>…</p><p>Three days later, she wakes up back in the hallway, in the middle of the night, in nothing more than her nightgown.</p><p>…</p><p>A week later, she laces her feet into a pair of boots, closes her eyes, and drifts off. When she wakes up in the hallway, she starts reading the books. They’re terrifying; they’re reassuring. The dreams that Elénniel has had are- apparently- much weaker in power than those the first queens had, but they’d still worried her parents about <em> why </em>their daughter kept dreaming of the sea. These books- diaries- are the first indication that Elénniel has ever had that she isn’t, actually, mad.</p><p>…</p><p>She loves Prince Ardamin, of course: who wouldn’t? He’s handsome, and he’s strong, and he’s got power running through his blood like lightning in a storm.</p><p>She loves him, and here’s the wildest, most terrifying thing in the world, even more than the sea: he loves her <em> back. </em></p><p>…</p><p>They have four children over the years: Adûnakhôr, and Gimilzakhôr, and Zigarâri and sweet little Azariphêl. Elénniel loves them with a depth deeper than the springs of the sea. She loves them with a love more ferocious than the teeth of the vicious, ever-famished sea. She loves, Elénniel; she loves her family, and she loves her country, and she loves her husband, too, overwhelmingly, whole-bodied, soul-full.</p><p>…</p><p>The diaries are simple enough to read- to translate, really, but Elénniel’s gotten better at Quenya than most scholars through sheer curiosity and exposure. The only difference is how much happier the world seems in them: even the most miserable, like Tar-Ancalimë, or Tari-Meneldimë, had a sort of confidence in the concept of <em> Númenor </em>in a manner that Elénniel hasn’t ever experienced.</p><p>Some nights, she ponders over it. </p><p>How good Númenor <em> could </em> be: free and fair and shining, without slaves, its women as fierce as Tari-Apairë or Tari-Melúviel or Tar-Ancalimë. Even Tar-Vanimeldë was allowed to do what she wished instead of forced to kneel to her husband’s every whim. Certainly, Elénniel still has <em> rights, </em>in a manner that apparently the queens of Middle-Earth do not, but surely it is not wrong to think she could have something more than this? Surely it is not wrong to work towards that dream, as Ardamin also works to make Númenor as bright as it was in Tar-Minyatur’s time? Surely Ardamin, the love of her life, the light of her life, will understand?</p><p>…</p><p>Surely. <em> Surely. </em></p><p>…</p><p>“My lord,” says Elénniel, and turns in her chair to address him. </p><p>Ardamin is in bed already, eyes half-slitted with exhaustion. There are papers strewn all around him. But when he sees the look on her face, some energy returns to it; he arches an eyebrow, and straightens.</p><p>“Yes, my lady?”</p><p>“I had something to ask of you.” Her hands are shaking, a little, but not so much from fear, Elénniel assures herself, as from excitement. “It was about this farm, my lord, in Emerië- your mother stayed in it.”</p><p>Something darkens in Ardamin’s expression. “What about it?”</p><p>“I’d like to renovate it.”</p><p>“Certainly.” He frowns at her. “You’ve renovated a number of royal properties, love. What’s special about this one?”</p><p>“Once it’s done,” she says slowly, “I’d like to sign it into my own name.”</p><p>Ardamin sits up a little straighter. “Your own name?”</p><p>“It’s just- you know how my family gave me such a large dowry, beloved, and I know that those properties are yours now- but- I’d just- and I know how difficult it is for you to give me something that defies precedent so- so <em> blatantly- </em>but it’s a very simple thing, you know, and I thought this was such a small parcel of land- it’d be like a token of affection, really, my lord, nothing more than that.”</p><p>He shakes his head, looking bemused. “But why would you want it?”</p><p>“It’s land, Ardamin,” says Elénniel. “Surely you understand <em> why </em>anyone would want it.”</p><p>He gets out of bed, stumbling over to her, and kneels at her side, taking both her hands between his own. When he looks up at her, the candles shine off his lovely face, off his beautiful, beautiful eyes. </p><p>“If that’s what you want, my silly, silly, wife,” he says, and Elénniel, unable to help herself, launches forward, kissing him breathless.</p><p>…</p><p>Elénniel asks for her daughters to be given the land in their own names when they wed. She demands the same of her daughters-in-law. It is a slow, grinding process. It is scary at times, and rarely rewarding, but when it is- those times burn up her throat like stars being born.</p><p>Stars being <em> reborn. </em></p><p>…</p><p>And then Elénniel dreams of the seashell queen.</p><p>…</p><p><em> Enough is enough, </em> she says. <em> How much am I condemned to watch, over and over again? The slaughter of the Teleri- the death of Gondolin- the collapse of Beleriand- and now Númenor, lovely Elenna, fairest of realms: it is dying. Can you not see this? How can you be blind to this? </em></p><p><em> You think Númenor is dying? </em> Elénniel asks slowly. <em> We’re stronger now than ever before. </em></p><p>
  <em> You stand there and blame the Valar for your own cruelties. And you think there will be no consequence? </em>
</p><p><em> I’ve heard what you did to Tari-Ohtácarë. </em> She lifts her head proudly. <em> So even if you’re right, nothing you say will ever convince me to listen to you, who turned Númenor against the Valar as surely as Morgoth’s actions turned the Noldor against him. </em></p><p>The queen bares her teeth at Elénniel. <em> I have stayed away for these years since Ohtácarë, </em> she says grimly. <em> But I have heard your lamentations and I have heard your griefs. And I have watched, Tari-Elénniel, as you </em> tried <em> to halt the change surrounding you. As you strove to make your world look like the kingdom that the Valar gifted to your ancestors. </em></p><p><em> But, </em>says Elénniel flatly. </p><p><em> But, </em> says the seashell queen, gentle and almost more terrifying for her gentleness, <em> it is as if you are trying to hold back the tide with your bare hands. Do you understand me? </em></p><p><em> No, </em>says Elénniel, but she is afraid- is heartstoppingly afraid- that she does.</p><p>
  <em> What you are doing is not enough. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> If I am not enough- </em>
</p><p><em> I did not say that, </em> says the seashell queen. <em> I said that your actions are not enough: and they are not. But there is not a single person in this world more capable than you of doing this. You are Queen: you are Queen of Númenor. Your husband is King, and he loves you as he loves air.  </em></p><p><em> Push harder, </em> murmurs Elénniel. <em> I would have- I would have tried. But still, the Valar- </em></p><p><em> All is not as it seems, </em> she says sadly. <em> It is still too dark a future that awaits you: so dark you cannot even fathom it. So dark that you have not put together what stands right before your eyes. </em></p><p>
  <em> I don’t understand. </em>
</p><p><em> Awake, </em> says the queen. <em> Awake, and pray you do! </em></p><p>…</p><p>Elénniel wakes in the same corridor as always, but this time she pauses. Looks at the silk hangings, threaded with silver: a symbol that is woven into multiple tapestries and etched into many book-covers. Meneltarma stands proud, rising in profile over the rest of Númenor, and hanging low over it is the fat curve of a crescent moon.</p><p>Slowly, feeling as if it’s a dream, she reaches out and touches the silver thread.</p><p><em> Nothing ever crumbles, </em> Meneldimë had written, and Handassë had spoken of <em> The ravenous sea, </em>and Ancalimë had insisted that her mother’s death was retribution, and for all that Apairë had been braver than any ten other men she’d never denied how the sea made her blood run cold.</p><p>“Elbereth have mercy on us,” whispers Elénniel, knowing the words to be sacrilegious to her husband, knowing exactly what she’s seeing. “Oh, sweet, sweet stars and salt.”</p><p>One finger, running down the curve of the crescent.</p><p>“Not a moon,” she murmurs. “Not a moon at all.”</p><p>Eighteen women before her, cursed with nightmares and terror. Blessed with eighteen lifetimes of sight, all coming down on Elénniel’s shoulders.</p><p>Because that is not a moon at all, hanging over Meneltarma, curling over fair, luminous Númenor: it is a <em> wave. </em></p><p>…</p><p>They have not been cursed, then, not on purpose. </p><p>They have been prophets, all of them: prophets to the threat of the Valar, hanging over all of their heads like a sword embedded into the throne. Prophets to the knowledge that if they are not as good as they once were, if they do not <em> try- </em>there is a way to destroy all of it. The mountains that the sea swallowed whole in Eressecuina's dreams- in all of their dreams- wasn't depicting something that had already happened. </p><p>It was showing what <em>would </em>happen to Elenna, to Westernesse, to the fairest of all lands. </p><p>…</p><p>After all, did not the Valar make Númenor?</p><p>Can they not unmake it?</p><p>…</p><p>The first time she tries to tell Ardamin, he brushes her off. The second time, he does the same, with more irritation. The third time, he tells her, sharply, to stop.</p><p>“We have walked too far to go back now,” he snarls, and Elénniel’s heart almost shatters under the weight of her fear.</p><p>She cannot believe him. She cannot accept it: she <em> will not </em>accept it. For her children’s sake. For her own sake. The world she loves so dearly cannot be so easily shattered. Elénniel will not let it be ruined, that much she’s certain of.</p><p>…</p><p>She’s arrested once, twice, thrice. Her speeches go unheard, sometimes, and the guards get rougher with each arrest.</p><p>The third time, Ardamin comes to her cell.</p><p>“You must stop,” he says, looking pained.</p><p>“Beloved,” says Elénniel. “Stop what? I am speaking. Is this not what your men told me, when I asked if their words against the Valar might not have an effect? That words meant nothing?”</p><p>“You call me beloved,” says Ardamin. “And you do this? Incite riots- promote- push for-”</p><p>“I will always love you,” she whispers back. “But- I will not let my world collapse because of your pride.”</p><p>He reaches out through the bars, and cups Elénniel’s face. “Once, there were no caveats between our love.”</p><p>“Once, I did not think you capable of destroying our world.”</p><p>There is grief in his eyes, but also determination, now. And Ardamin has always been- <em> always- </em>singularly frightening once determined.</p><p>“If you will not stop,” he tells her softly, “I will have no choice.”</p><p>“How will you stop me?” asks Elénniel, and smiles. “We are twinned blades, Ardamin: you are the heart of my heart, the blood in my bone.”</p><p>His hand has not dropped away from her face. “And,” he says, “I am king, as well.”</p><p>With that, Ardamin turns and leaves.</p><p>…</p><p>For a fortnight, Elénniel languishes in her jail cell. Then Ardamin calls her to court. It’s- not frightening, exactly, but her children are there, along with everyone else that she can name: her parents, her family, Ardamin’s uncles, all of his extended family. <em> Everyone. </em></p><p>“My king,” says Elénniel, when she has come within ten paces of the throne. </p><p>She drops to her knees and waits, head bowed.</p><p>“You still call me your king?”</p><p>“Of course,” says Elénniel, but she does not lift her head. “You are my husband. I swore at the altar of Meneltarma: you are my one, you are my only. My king, my husband, my lord and my beloved.”</p><p>“And still,” says Ardamin, “you persist in defying me.”</p><p>“Does defiance mean I do not love you?”</p><p>“I have debased myself to you,” he says loudly, so loud it echoes about the silent throne room over and over: <em> you-you-you-you. </em>“I have granted you pardons no other would ever have! I have risked the strength of my throne for you. That is what you have extracted from me, Akallabêth! My pride, my strength, my people’s strength!”</p><p>Elénniel looks up at him. <em> Akallabêth, </em>she thinks, and her heart hurts. She-that-is-fallen. But that is not just that: the name conveys sorrow in the falling of something glorious. The irrevocable destruction of something that had once meant everything.</p><p>“Ardamin,” she whispers.</p><p>“But I am merciful,” says Ardamin. “I am merciful, and I am kind, and I have loved you, Elénniel, more than I can ever put into words. Recant, and I will offer you exile into my mother’s home. Recant, and I will be a merciful king.”</p><p>Elénniel rises to her feet. Pushes her hair behind her, and looks Ardamin in the eye. </p><p>“And if I refuse?”</p><p>“Elénniel,” moans her mother, but she does not turn, and Ardamin does not look away from her gaze either.</p><p>“If you refuse,” says Ardamin gently, “I shall have to give you the death of a traitor.”</p><p>Oh, how she loves him. How she loves him, and her children, and her world. </p><p>But there is a sword hanging over her beloved’s throne, and her children shall be washed away in the blood of Elénniel does nothing. The tears she’s washed into the sea- the price she’s offered, paltry and petty as it is- cannot match up to the sins of her people. </p><p>“You would kill me?” she asks softly. “Your own wife, wedded for two centuries and longer?”</p><p>“I would not wish it,” he says. “I would do it with the heaviest of hearts.”</p><p>But perhaps the blood might be enough.</p><p>Perhaps her sacrifice will stay the darkness for a generation. Longer.</p><p>“Well, then,” says Elénniel, and straightens her shoulders firmly. She can see the despair in Ardamin’s eyes as he realizes that she will not relent, but she refuses to let that soften her voice. “Is it to be a beheading, or the pyre?”</p><p>“Which would you prefer, my wife?” asks Ardamin, a ghastly smile on his face.</p><p>“The pyre,” she replies crisply. “I’ve never feared pain in my life, and I’ll not start now.”</p><p>Ardamin bows his head. “Tonight, then,” he says grimly.</p><p>…</p><p>Elénniel is locked in her queen’s chambers to await death. She waits only until they leave her room to go to the window, and kneel, and pray: not to deliver her from death but to remind the Valar that she is dying for her people. There are good people here in Númenor, scattered into the populace like pearls in the sea.</p><p>
  <em> Do not drown us alive, I beg of you: if my pain ever meant anything to you, then do not punish my people. </em>
</p><p>There’s a knock at the door, and Elénniel startles, but she goes to open it. It’s Zigarâri and Azariphêl, both white with terror. Elénniel welcomes them inside, and shows them the dresses she wants them to split amongst themselves in the case of her death, the way she’d prefer for them to split the profits from the farm in Emerië, the-</p><p>“How are you so calm about this!” shrills Azariphêl.</p><p>Elénniel blinks at her. “What else should I be? Wailing my misfortune?”</p><p>“Mother-”</p><p>“I am as I have ever been.” Elénniel reaches out and catches Azariphêl’s wrist, reels her into an embrace. “I always knew it could end this way, sweet girl. Remember that. Remember that the worst possible outcome- it is not likely, but it is always <em> possible, </em>and we must always be ready for it.”</p><p>Before Azariphêl or Zigarâri can reply, there’s a knock at the door, and Adûnakhôr sweeps inside with his wife.</p><p>“Mother,” he says. </p><p>“My son,” she replies, with the faintest touch of wariness. She barely notices her daughters leaving the room. “Was there something you wanted?”</p><p>“He won’t last long without you,” he says, without preamble. “I plan to take the throne from him as soon as this is over. A wife-killer as the King of Númenor? Tar-Ardamin’s last act has been done.”</p><p>“And you’re telling me this because…”</p><p>“Because you deserve to know.”</p><p>“Adûnakhôr,” says Elénniel quietly, reaching forwards. “Do not blame your father for-”</p><p>“For being weak?” Adûnakhôr’s face, sharp and sharper, turns hatchet-like. “For loving you so dearly he ruined himself? I don’t blame him for killing you: I blame him for making such a public <em> production </em>out of it.”</p><p>Elénniel studies him closely. “You would’ve stuck a knife between my ribs in that jailcell, would you?”</p><p>“You took advantage of his gentle heart,” says Adûnakhôr, and leans down, so she can see him closer and closer: the gleam of his eyes, the glitter of his jewels. All those things that make him her son. “But, Mother: I’ve inherited <em> your </em>heart, and your cunning, and your wit.”</p><p>“You cannot kill him yourself,” she murmurs. “Not if you wish to take the throne yourself. Not if you wish to avoid a civil war.”</p><p>“Thankfully,” he says, “I’ve a brother.”</p><p>The pang of horror in her heart feels like a knife, but Elénniel only allows herself a blink to absorb the blow. </p><p>“You would sacrifice Gimilzakhôr to your own impatience?”</p><p>“You started this,” says Adûnakhôr. “I’m finishing it.”</p><p>He turns, then, and spins out of the room, and Elénniel buries her face in her hands, barely keeping herself from weeping. </p><p>A scrape against the carpet makes her look up sharply: makes her see Azarâri, Adûnakhôr’s meek wife. Her chestnut-rich hair is drawn back into a severe braid, and she looks pale and small.</p><p>“Yes, Azarâri?” she asks wearily.</p><p>She hesitates briefly. Then she says, “In one of your speeches- in front of the garment house- you mentioned dreams.”</p><p>Elénniel’s head snaps towards her. “Yes. I did.”</p><p>“I dream of the sea,” she says tiredly. “Every night.”</p><p>“Have you- have you seen-”</p><p>“-the corridor? Yes.”</p><p>“Why didn’t you <em> tell-” </em>Elénniel shakes her head. “No, there’s no time. Have you read those books?”</p><p>“They’re in Quenya,” says Azarâri carefully.</p><p>“They’re priceless,” Elénniel whispers. “Utterly priceless. Thousands of years of history. Eighteen women before me- and now- and now <em> you: </em>the twentieth, in the line of Olórëar. This is- this is how I know. Of the ravenous sea. Of the terror. Of-”</p><p>“Of,” she says softly, “the end.”</p><p>Elénniel swallows. “Yes.”</p><p>“You have seen something,” says Azarâri. “Something that frightens you.”</p><p>“The moon is the sea,” Elénniel replies. “The moon you remember: hanging over Meneltarma. It is not the moon at all. It is the wave of the sea, waiting to kill us. A warning and a vision: we will die, if ever we move too far. If ever we do too much evil.”</p><p>Azarâri has gone pale, but to her credit, she does not look like she is flinching. “We will drown alive, under a wave so great.”</p><p>“And yet we have seen it before,” she whispers. “Have you not? Beleriand-ruined. The land that never crumbled: the land that was swallowed whole by the ravenous, ever-starving sea.”</p><p>“What do I need to do?”</p><p>“Take my ashes,” says Elénniel, barely hoping to breathe it properly. “Pour it into the sea. Do not let my son bury me at Meneltarma.”</p><p>Azarâri does not smile, but her hands are warm on Elénniel’s wrists when she grips them, and they do not shake. </p><p>“It will be done,” she assures Elénniel.</p><p>And though the end is nigh, though Elénniel has managed so <em> little </em>of what the seashell queen had commanded of her, something like hope alights in her breast like a little, glittering sun.</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Azarâri - Star-queen</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>Her hands shake as she watches Tari-Elénniel walk to her death. </p><p>Her hands shake, but Azarâri does not let her fingers loosen on the pot she’s stolen from her mother-in-law’s vanity, hastily emptied of some powder into a plant. It is vital that she must wait. It is vital that she is not suspected.</p><p>As she watches, Elénniel steps onto the pyre. </p><p>The flame takes hold, and Azarâri turns away. A flash of white catches in her eye: Zimrathôn, escaping his nurse to run to his father. Bile rises in Azarâri’s throat. Not even the children are spared this sacrilege: husbands killing wives, sons killing fathers.</p><p>The medicine she gave to Elénniel is working at least; the queen has not screamed since the fire took hold, the drugs numbing her to everything.</p><p>The wind picks up, sweeping the smoke towards Azarâri and causing her eyes to sting. She misses exactly what happens- but there’s a scream, and a howl, and then more screams, louder and louder still, and when she manages to see through the fire again Tar-Ardamin is in the flames, screaming, and Prince Gimilzakhôr is on his knees, gripped and forced still by the king’s guards.</p><p>Adûnakhôr is standing on the other side of the fire, Zimrathôn propped at his side. If anyone were to see his face at that moment, they would see grief, a son who’s been orphaned in the same moment he inherited the throne, but all that Azarâri sees is the man who’d sworn to his mother that he would slide a knife between her ribs if she’d been his wife.</p><p>She meets his gaze, and then averts it.</p><p>
  <em> The moon is a wave.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> The terror is upon us. </em>
</p><p>Adûnakhôr will not allow this to be recorded in history. Azarâri knows her husband well enough to know this. His father will be stricken from the records, and his mother’s fate shall be silenced, and all that Elénniel stood for shall be erased as the sea erases the marks carved into the sand.</p><p>If she takes Zimrathôn with her, Adûnakhôr shall chase her unto the ends of the earth.</p><p>And Azarâri cannot do that.</p><p>Nineteen women have built up those books. Twenty women have suffered in silence and in screams. Eighteen women have allowed Elénniel to understand their dreams. And now the weight of all of that history, all that hope, all that despair, rests on her shoulders: Azarâri’s shoulders.</p><p>She will not be the one to let them down.</p><p>…</p><p>The pyre burns until dawn. Finally, Azarâri allows herself to leave the courtyard and put Zimrathôn to sleep: she kisses his curls, and then she goes to her sisters-in-law, and soothes them with meaningless words, and then she returns to her chambers. She only waits for a few minutes before Adûnakhôr strides within.</p><p>“My Queen,” he says, and smiles.</p><p>Azarâri approaches him, and kisses him, though all she can taste is smoke and blood. “My King,” she murmurs to him. “Shall we celebrate?”</p><p>“Just one,” he says, and takes the glass she gives him. </p><p>“To the stars,” says Azarâri, lifting her goblet high.</p><p>Adûnakhôr’s lip curls with pure, unbridled joy. He has always enjoyed it when she plays on their names- when she is blasphemous. </p><p>
  <em> But you are not Manwë, and I am not Varda. </em>
</p><p>“To the stars,” he says, and drinks.</p><p>Azarâri kisses him again, hard, and keeps kissing him until he goes slack. Then she lays him out on the bed, wraps herself in a cloak, and flees to the still-smoldering pyre.</p><p>On it, she chops off her hair and watches the strands catch alight. She packs the ashes away neatly- to pour them out in Andúnië- and strips out of her gown and into something far shabbier, and trundles west out of Armenelos on a rickety wagon covered with bales of hay, filled with priceless books.</p><p>…</p><p>It’s the last time she ever sees her husband, or her son.</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Gimilêth - Silver fortress</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>Gimilêth grows up in a tale of nightmares.</p><p>Not just of the sea, of course: it’s also nightmares of what shall be done to her family if she ever steps out of tune. It’s nightmares of Ar-Adûnakhôr’s rage when he swept through the pockets of the Faithful running through Númenor. Gimilêth is the price of that rage: she is the daughter of the Lord of Andúnië, the Elf-Friend who dared to defy Adûnakhôr, and Gimilêth is the hostage taken to ensure Andúnië remains silent and compliant.</p><p>It does not matter to Ar-Adûnakhôr that his son does not want a wife. It does not matter to him that he has lost everything to the throne that he now sits upon. It does not matter to him that the elf-friends do not, actually, mean him any harm.</p><p>Gimilêth will die in Armenelos, alone and fearful, and she has only old, glittering jewels to keep her warm.</p><p>…</p><p>She knows the whispers that abound through the court: that she is mad, that she is tortured, that Eru wishes to punish the line of Tar-Minyatur with this shabby, shattered excuse for a princess. Gimilêth has heard all of the stories. She does not- cannot- deny them. She does not want to, either.</p><p>…</p><p>And then she wakes up, shaking, shivering, in a dark, empty corridor. </p><p>In a dark, empty corridor that ends in a dark, shadowy room full of bookshelves: all of them empty.</p><p>Gimilêth swallows, staring. A feeling of heaviness hangs about the room- like history, like a cloak of wool turned sodden by unexpected rain, like something has been stolen. The walls are better than outside- they’re covered by lovely, shining tapestries. When she approaches one, studies it closely, Gimilêth almost cries out.</p><p>It echoes her nightmares perfectly.</p><p>The sea, thick and green and glowing, rising so high it blocks out the sun. The pitiful brown of the land. The scattered dots of humans, of animals- not praying any longer, hopeless. Awaiting death.</p><p>Shaking, shaken, Gimilêth flees.</p><p>…</p><p>The next night, she dreams of a woman with seashells glittering in her hair.</p><p><em> You are not meant to be alone, </em>she says sadly.</p><p>Gimilêth stares at her. <em> No? </em></p><p>
  <em> The history of all those that came before you- it was a comfort to your predecessors. The sea-dreamers of Númenor had heirs, daughter-not-of-their-blood, that they could raise to the old traditions. But now there is nothing and no one: just you, little daughter. Star-silver fortress. Your father named you well, Gimilêth of Andúnië, and you shall have to live up to it. </em>
</p><p><em> There were others before me, </em>she whispers, still barely able to comprehend that. </p><p>The seashells glitter-glow, red and green and white as the stars Gimilêth is named for, and the woman swoops forward. <em> Keep them safe, </em> she commands. <em> Keep yourself safe. Know the truth of the ancient traditions, and fold them into your heart. So long as there is honor in the heart of Númenor, so shall we keep you safe. </em></p><p><em> How am I supposed to do that? </em> demands Gimilêth. <em> Someone will surely find this place. And I cannot- I don’t even know how to weave! How can I pretend that these aren’t sacrilegious? </em></p><p><em> Use, </em> she advises, <em> your imagination. </em></p><p>…</p><p>So Gimilêth does: she learns how to weave tapestries, and starts producing them at such a great output nobody can know how many she makes- nobody can know if the single tapestry stolen from the dark corridor is her own, or another queen’s creation. Her ladies do the same. And Gimilêth- sweet, soft Gimilêth, who’s been terrified and screaming ever since Ar-Adûnakhôr brought her to Armenelos- surely cannot be sowing the seeds of rebellion, not Gimilêth who hasn’t looked her father-in-law in the eye once since leaving Andúnië. Not Gimilêth, who’d barely managed to get through the wedding ceremony without fainting.</p><p>Tari-Apairë had walked the seas with grandeur and a sword of steel. Tari-Melúviel had reigned over Númenor with greatness and a silk-shod fist of iron. Tari-Elénniel had stood before her own people and defied their disdain to speak the truths of her memory. </p><p>But Gimilêth does not have their strength or their courage.</p><p>Here is what she has: her father-in-law’s hatred, and her husband’s disgust, and a nation’s disdain. Gimilêth is nothing and no one; she is as a ghost in the halls of Armenelos’ palace. </p><p>If they think her incapable of anything, they will not think her capable of rebellion. </p><p>And there are many, many ways to rebel that are not so obvious as Tari-Elénniel.</p><p>…</p><p>Gimilêth starts giving away the tapestries. Her own, mostly, but any ten that she gifts to a courtier will have one woven by Ninquitacirya or Condiel or Uruvoitë in the bundle. </p><p>It’s her greatest defiance: the passing of tapestries woven by queens into homes that would spit on those queens’ graves if they knew the true hands that crafted them. Gimilêth regrets not keeping the tapestries safe under her own purview, but it would’ve been too dangerous: too questionable. Sooner or later, someone would have walked down that corridor, and sooner or later the tapestries would have been burned for the stories they dared to depict. A line of tapestries telling the story is one thing; a single tapestry showing the drowning of Beleriand is another entirely.</p><p>Now, there are a hundred such tapestries sent throughout the land. By the time Gimilêth dies, almost every courtier’s home has one, and the depictions of the sea- vivid, shining, green and beautiful- are among the most common seen through the land.</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Nitiphêl - Kindle-daughter</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>“I will marry you and leave my family behind,” she tells Ar-Sakalthôr, head tilted up, proud and cold as a glacier, “if you show me the family I shall join in Armenelos.”</p><p>Three weeks later, Sakalthôr brings an army to her family’s doorstep, and calls in a voice fierce as silver trumpets: “Here is my family! Here is my shieldbrother, for whom I shall die without pause! Here is my sword-sister, who has saved my life more times than I can count! Here are my children, my heirs, my people: whom I love more than mine own breath!”</p><p>Laughing, she comes out of the high walls- ignores her father’s objections, and kisses Sakalthôr. </p><p>“Nitiphêl,” he murmurs, when she steps away. “For the flames you kindle in me, and the family you leave behind for me. Such shall I name you.”</p><p>“I am honored,” says Nitiphêl, and kisses Sakalthôr once more.</p><p>…</p><p>Family is important in Harad. Of utmost importance. Without family, people die. Without family, there is nothing: not water, not wealth, not joy. </p><p>Sakalthôr might not care for his family, but it isn’t as if Nitiphêl loves all <em> her </em>family either. It’s just that she knows better than to let her dislike leave her alone.</p><p>…</p><p>“Gimilzôr shall wed a girl from Andúnië,” she tells Sakalthôr. “And their wedding shall be as much a joining of Andustar to Armenelos as a joining of two young people.”</p><p>“I didn’t know Andustar had declared independence,” grumbles Sakalthôr.</p><p>Nitiphêl smiles, wide, flashing. “Doing this makes sure they <em> don’t, </em>love. It’s why your grandfather took your mother as a hostage. It’s why you’ll do the same: but quieter, so when you take the throne there won’t be even murmurs of rebellion.”</p><p>“It is like having a seer for a wife,” he says, but Sakalthôr is smiling as well, and when Gimilzôr falls in love with Inzilbêth’s lotus-wide eyes and lovely thick hair, they both ensure Gimilzôr weds her before he can change his mind.</p><p>…</p><p>(Inzilbêth brings with her strange, salt-cured books in a different script from Adûnaic, and she screams sometimes, in her sleep, and she refuses to go to Rómenna or near saltwater. </p><p>Nitiphêl asks her about it, once, and learns that her dreams are feared to be more than dreams. That Númenor- lovely, beautiful Númenor- is feared to be on the precipice of destruction. The Elendili wished to separate from the king’s seat- and would have!- if not for Inzilbêth’s betrothal to Gimilzôr.)</p><p>…</p><p>“I don’t know this history,” Nitiphêl tells her, “and it is not my inheritance- not as it was for the other sea-dreamers, not as it is for you. But… I would be grateful if you would write something for me? In- do not do it in Adûnaic. In Quenya. For the other Olórëar to understand.”</p><p>“Of course,” says Inzilbêth, eyes wide and innocent as silver flowers, like she hasn’t been pouring rebellion into one son’s ear, like she hasn’t been toying with Nitiphêl’s son’s heart since the first day they met. </p><p><em> I brought a cursed knife into my home, </em> thinks Nitiphêl resignedly. <em> How can I blame it for flaying us alive? </em></p><p>“Write,” she says, and swallows, “that the end is not yet upon us, and only if we are together can that be maintained. I have done things that might be unadvisable- I have hurt, and I have sacrificed people that perhaps should not have been sacrificed, and I have done things I had no right to do: but it was to keep this world whole and unbroken, and we cannot achieve this if we are separate. One man cannot save us all: it must be all of us, as a wave, as an army, working together.”</p><p>Inzilbêth finishes writing, then looks up at Nitiphêl calmly. “At some point,” she says, putting the pen down and ignoring the ink slowly dripping from one end, “compromise is untenable.”</p><p>“Pray we never reach that point, then,” says Nitiphêl, and stalks away.</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Inzilbêth - Bloom-whisperer</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>When she leaves Andúnië, Inzilbêth takes with her books, a clenched heart, and the indomitable will of her mother’s mother’s mother: <em> Zabâthi, </em>once named Azarâri, who remarried once she left her husband the king. </p><p>Azarâri never once let herself break at her husband or her husband’s actions. </p><p>Inzilbêth will not be lesser than her, not with the stakes so, so high.</p><p>…</p><p>Her name means <em> bloom-whisperer, </em> but in reality what Inzilbêth means is <em> whispering of the petals of a flower in a wind. </em> </p><p>Or: <em> The whispering of secrets in the wind. </em></p><p>…</p><p>Inzilbêth picks her battles: they’ve all learned not to be martyred as Tari-Elénniel, the elf-friends of Andustar. Better to be alive and frustrating than dead and forgotten. She does not speak out loudly, nor angrily. When Gimilzôr forcibly relocates her family to Rómenna, Inzilbêth convinces them to obey, without protest. Her game is a larger one than Gimilzôr thinks he plays: her victory, in the same manner, shall be all the sweeter for it. When Gimilzôr sends their second son to be fostered by his cousins, Inzilbêth smiles wanly. When Gimilzôr insists Inziladûn wed Aglarâni, Inzilbêth does not protest.</p><p>She plays the best role that anyone has ever played in their life. She wears the jewels that Gimilzôr showers upon her. She kisses him, deeply and warmly, and she smiles so bright her eyes shine.</p><p>Then, at night, Inzilbêth whispers stories of the Valar into her son’s ears.</p><p>…</p><p>Her father had not been happy when Gimilzôr asked for her hand in marriage. The Lords of Andúnië had been all but coalesced behind the idea of secession. They’d been waiting for Ar-Zimrathôn’s death to use the confusion to truly pull away- after Gimilêth’s death, there had been nothing tying them to Armenelos- but then Gimilzôr had fallen in love, and Inzilbêth had continued the grand tradition of being a hostage to the Númenórean throne.</p><p><em> I will not be like her, </em> she’d sworn to her father, when he contemplated seceding anyways, when he’d considered going to war to keep Inzilbêth safe. <em> I will not be foolish like Elénniel, and I will not be silent like Gimilêth. Believe me. Believe me. What better weapon for you, Father, than an ember sown into the royal family, just waiting for the right time to burn the castle down? </em></p><p>…</p><p>She divides. She conquers. </p><p>Slowly, of course, but Inzilbêth has wedded into this family: she has time to ruin them.</p><p>…</p><p>When Gimilzôr slips and falls off his horse, he is left paralyzed. It is going to be a slow death. Inzilbêth tells Inziladûn to call for his brother, and she passes the days sitting beside her husband, stroking his hand, pressing water into his lips when he looks thirsty.</p><p>On the fifth day, the physicians tell her that it is a choice: there is a tincture that will allow Gimilzôr to speak for some time, but it will lead to a much quicker death. It will reduce the pain by killing the tissue: if given, Gimilzôr will have only a few hours before his lungs stop functioning.</p><p>“Give it,” says Inzilbêth. “He deserves to speak to his sons.”</p><p>When Inziladûn enters, Gimilzôr eyes his son. “You will be a good king,” he says finally. “Be strong, my boy, and confident: Ar-Inziladûn shall be the most glorious of all our ancestors.”</p><p>Inziladûn reaches out and grips his father closely. “Father,” he murmurs, “I thank you for your kind words. But Númenor shall never known an Ar-Inziladûn.” His eyes dart up to meet Inzilbêth’s, and she gives him a shallow nod. “When I’m crowned, I shall take the name Tar-Palantir.”</p><p><em> “What?” </em> snarls Gimilzôr. He struggles upright, twisting to glare at Inzilbêth. “You- you’re involved in this too? You? <em> You?” </em></p><p>“You wedded me,” murmurs Inzilbêth. “You know from whence I come, beloved.”</p><p>“You betrayed me. <em> Us. </em> The Valar- you are a <em> fool </em>if you think- and now-”</p><p>“The Valar built this,” says Inzilbêth. “And I have seen it: the wave that shall destroy us, if we are not careful. If we are not desperate yet- then we should be, we <em> must </em>be-”</p><p>“-how <em> dare-” </em></p><p>“-I taught him to be kind, to be good-”</p><p>“-you are a traitor!” Gimilzôr bellows. “You are a traitor, the both of you!” He collapses backwards, red-faced and panting. “Get <em> out.” </em></p><p>…</p><p>Here is the truth that Inzilbêth had always known, but never understood: Elénniel had loved her husband, had loved him even unto her death. Inzilbêth had sworn never to do the same. She does not love anyone so deeply as she loves the idea of Númenor: of what it can be, of what it can achieve. And now with Gimilzôr dead- with Gimilzôr on death’s doorstep- she has everything to gain. Everything to gain, and everything to say, and everything to <em> do- </em></p><p>Inzilbêth’s sacrificed her sons: one to her ideals, and one to her silence. She sacrificed her family’s homes, and she sacrificed her own joy, and she, by the end, sacrificed her husband’s love as well.</p><p>…</p><p>When Gimilkhâd hands her the tea, Inzilbêth does not fear him. When she feels her throat tighten up- when she feels her eyesight start to dim- she laughs, and laughs, and laughs, something wild excoriating up her throat.</p><p>Inzilbêth has spent a lifetime waiting for her husband’s death, and he’s taken even that from her.</p><p>She cannot kill her son. Leave aside if she wants to or not; Inzilbêth <em> cannot, </em> any longer, not with her head spinning and belly churning and eyes darkening. Instead, she reaches up, and cups the back of his neck, and when he leans down over her- when he underestimates her, as his father has done all his life, thinking Inzilbêth the flower and not the whisper of secrets that sound <em> like </em>the wind rustling through the petals of a flower- she drags her nails down his face so deep they will scar forever and ever and ever and-</p><p>Darkness seizes Inzilbêth, and she is swallowed whole by the dark sea.</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em> <strong> Aglarâni - Glorious-land</strong> </em>
</p><p>…</p><p>She loves Gimilkhâd. That is the truth at the beginning and the end of all things: she loves Gimilkhâd, and she is forced to marry his brother instead, and Aglarâni- who has never wanted the throne, who has never wanted <em> anything, </em>really, but to love and be loved- watches her world collapse around her, over and over and over again.</p><p>…</p><p>When Aglarâni sees the blood dripping down Gimilkhâd’s fine face, when she sees the hand he has cupped around his mother’s white neck, when she sees the fury on his beautiful features- Aglarâni steps forwards, and takes the cup of poison from his milk-pale fingers, and throws the last dregs of evidence into the grass outside.</p><p>“Come,” she says, and touches his cheek with the barest tip of her nail. “You must be healed.”</p><p>She takes him into her own chambers, and she sews the gashes closed, and when it is all over Aglarâni presses her forehead to his. </p><p>“I have lost it all now,” he whispers. “My father, my mother, my wife. And now: even my own brother shall shatter our legacy into so much glass and salt. Everything we’ve done from Atanamir himself- a thousand <em> years- </em>everything built and crafted and struggled for: as nothing but ash.”</p><p>“No,” says Aglarâni, and passes a hand through his hair, presses a kiss as close to his lips as she dares. “I am here, my lord. Remember that. Whatever you wish for: I am here.”</p><p>…</p><p>She lies to her husband when he asks her what happened. She insists that Inziladûn let his brother go, and he is so grief-struck with the loss of his mother that he does not even press her so hard.</p><p>…</p><p>(She is young: very young. And a man with dark hair and eyes like the sun comes to her, and he listens to her stories of the sea, and he says, <em> I think I can help you.  </em></p><p>It does not take much for a girl to fall in love.)</p><p>…</p><p>Aglarâni watches her husband die slowly and witheringly, and she would pity him if not for how much his silence at his own brother’s death had hurt her. Gimilkhâd had died in the autumn eight years previous, and what had Tar-Palantir the Far-Sighted done? He had sent out a letter to his nephew, and he had buried his brother, and he had walked on with his knees growing more painful, with his eyes growing ever-milkier, with his voice ever-feebler.</p><p>And Aglarâni- younger than him by far, embittered, infuriated- watches it all.</p><p>…</p><p>Tar-Palantir dies, and she does not hesitate to send the letter on their fastest horse to Pharazôn.</p><p>…</p><p>Pharazôn rides into Armenelos with an army of gold and scarlet. He canters up to the steps of the room where Tar-Palantir lies in state, just about ready to be buried.</p><p>“Aunt,” he booms. “Why the gloom and doom?”</p><p>Míriel emerges from the rooms, face white. “What is happening?” she asks sharply. “Your king lies in-”</p><p>“Zimraphel,” says Pharazôn, and swings off his horse, and approaches her. He kneels, taking her hand in what looks like a bruising grip. “Ar-Zimraphel.”</p><p>“I am not yet Queen,” says Míriel, lips bloodless. “Get up, cousin. We must accept the traditions-”</p><p>“No,” says Pharazôn. </p><p>Míriel stares at him. “No?”</p><p>“No,” he repeats. “I will not wait for a fortnight or whatever our ancestors thought appropriate- and you will not like it if I do, cousin: my men shall not be content to sit quietly and mourn as if they were twittering maids.”</p><p>“Tar-Palantir has told how he would desire his-”</p><p>“And Tar-Palantir is dead,” says Pharazôn, shrugging. It is cruel: Aglarâni sees that, and she knows it, but the world is cruel sometimes, is it not? And Míriel- or Zimraphel, as Pharazôn has named her- cannot sit in silence or darkness simply because she’d like to avoid the truth. “We cannot live in the past: it is the future that matters. The future, where we refuse to be so shackled as we were in your father’s rule.”</p><p>“How <em> dare </em> you,” says Míriel, ripping her hand out of Pharazôn’s and stumbling back. “How dare you! My father- your <em> uncle- </em>he lies in state, he is dead, and you think it a cause for celebration?”</p><p>“He thought himself better than all the previous rulers,” says Pharazôn calmly. “A thousand years and more of good, fine kings, and Tar-Palantir wishes to undo it? There are consequences. I shall not go so far as to say it is a good thing he is dead-”</p><p>
  <em> “How-” </em>
</p><p>“-but I cannot control my thoughts.”</p><p>Míriel trembles, and turns to Aglarâni. “Mother,” she entreats her. “Mother, tell him- this is enough. Father has said how he wishes to- I must-”</p><p>Aglarâni hesitates, and sees the twitch of betrayal blooming over her daughter’s face. Pharazôn steps between them.</p><p>“Let us bargain,” he says, and Míriel glares at him, face incandescent. Pharazôn continues, unbothered: “I shall not interfere in your… festivities, cousin, if you shall accede your throne to me.”</p><p>“My throne for my father’s dignity?” demands Míriel. “Have you lost your mind? How do you- how did you even know to come so quickly?”</p><p>“Daughter,” says Aglarâni, stepping forwards and pressing a hand to her shoulder. “Míriel. You must know that you shall not make as well a queen as Pharazôn shall a king. It might feel unfair- but we women have always dealt with this kind of unfairness, have we not? We cannot expect-”</p><p>Míriel slaps her.</p><p>Aglarâni stares back, pressing a hand to the stinging skin. </p><p>“A queen does not make bargains with men,” she says coldly, and slams the door to her father’s chambers in their faces.</p><p>Aglarâni glances at Pharazôn, who is frowning. It sits uneasily on his handsome features; she thinks he would look better with the fierce kind of fury reserved for a battlefield. His face is made for that, in a manner few can hope to.</p><p>“She is not,” he says deliberately, after a long silence, “queen yet.”</p><p>…</p><p>Aglarâni watches, as she has watched her whole life: her daughter being strapped into her wedding dress, belly laid open to the bone, weaving from the blood loss; her daughter’s scepter being wrested from her bone-white fingers; her daughter’s large eyes and pale, wavering voice for months afterwards.</p><p>She watches, and she says nothing.</p><p>…</p><p>The only time Míriel deigns to speak to her after that is when the lightning flashes down and smites the dome of the Temple and wreathes it in flame: she comes to Aglarâni, and she holds her mother’s hands in her own cold ones, and she says, “Help me end this, Mother.”</p><p>Aglarâni looks at her, and then back to the silhouette of Sauron, golden and dark amid fire and terror. “You are a queen,” she says gently, and touches her daughter’s soft, smooth cheek. “But he is a god, Míriel.”</p><p>“My husband goes to defy the greatest of gods, and you think this one- this shrunken wretch- is one we cannot defeat?” Míriel laughs, painful and wracked. “Lightning and flame does not make a god.”</p><p>“And what does?”</p><p>“Your worship,” she says. “Your fear. Your groveling. Sauron shall shatter us as so much kindling. Sauron shall drown us alive, and you will still sit here and call him great for the doing.”</p><p>“We are not so foolish as you make us out to be,” says Aglarâni.</p><p>Míriel smiles, and it is sad, and she looks like her father: grieved and grievous, like a wounded soldier gripping the last pennant of a fallen army.</p><p>“You are blinded by your pride,” she says, and kisses Aglarâni’s forehead, and walks away.</p><p>…</p><p>
  <strong> <em> Míriel - Jewel-daughter</em> </strong>
</p><p>…</p><p>(Míriel is always speckled with little burns as a child. Nobody understands it. But her dreams are always of a woman crowned with seashells, eyes like stars and hands so hot they burn when they brush against Míriel’s infant-fat skin. The woman is always weeping, but her hands are steady, and she never hurts Míriel more than she can bear.)</p><p>…</p><p>(Her first fear is not of water, as the other sea-dreamers: but of flame.)</p><p>…</p><p>(“You must wed him,” her mother tells her.</p><p>Míriel, who had not expected anything else, does not flinch. She lifts her arms and lets her mother lace her into the gown, which is shining and beautiful and too bright for the kind of day that is dawning.</p><p>“Do you know what happened to Tar-Ardamin’s wife?” she asks, staring into the mirror.</p><p>Her mother hums. </p><p>“Tari-Elénniel was burned alive,” Míriel says, eyes slanting half-shut, “for speaking against her husband. She was offered the choice between the sword and the fire, and she chose a pyre.”</p><p>“It should teach you to hold your tongue,” murmurs her mother.</p><p>Míriel smiles, and promises herself it will be the last smile she ever offers of her own volition. “Tar-Ardamin named her <em> Akallabêth </em>at her trial. Akallabêth: the fallen one, the one that was dear before the falling and ruined in the collapse, the one whose destruction shall never be undone for nothing can ever restore it to its original glory.”</p><p>“Míriel,” she sighs.</p><p>“They will not call me Akallabêth,” says Míriel, “for I was never great or grand before my fall. They will not name me that, not ever. But Númenor shall be known for this: for the destruction of its line, and for the end of this once-mighty kingdom.”</p><p>And before her mother can stop her, Míriel takes the shearing scissors and plunges it as deep as she can into her womb.)</p><p>…</p><p>(No: she does not wish to die.</p><p>But she will not bring children into this world, to be used and discarded like pawns. Pharazôn can have her if he wishes, but he will not ever have children of her line, the line of kings. None of his bastard children can ever hope to have the same right, the right he covets so dearly, as one borne of Míriel’s womb: and it is that womb she has, finally and fully, stripped from him.)</p><p>…</p><p>(When lightning strikes down the Temple, Míriel laughs. She has ever feared flame more than the sea, and even now the memory of the seashell-crowned queen sings through burns speckling her arms and shoulders and back. </p><p><em> Fire does not make a god, </em>she thinks, and spits the blood of her chewed tongue onto the stone of her ancestor’s palace.)</p><p>…</p><p><em> (I spit on your inevitability, </em> she thinks, once, walking the sea, hands cold, fingers numb. <em> I will not yield to the end until the end has come upon me. We are not what we were, but we are not yet nothing. </em></p><p><em> Not, </em> she thinks, <em> yet.) </em></p><p>…</p><p>(Pharazôn leaves, and Sauron comes to her, and he offers her things: everything dear to Míriel, everything that she could ever desire. Everything and more.</p><p>She thinks of Eressecuina, who rowed across a sea on the strength of a dream, and Meneldimë, who spent a lifetime terrified and still fighting, and Handassë, who was steadfast as a lighthouse, and Rilma, who glowed with her own beauty and strength, and Almarian, who fought for her desires unto the end, and Erendis, who knew when to fight and when to retreat, and Ancalimë, who knew and studied and slept and breathed hatred and justice in equal measure, and Ninquitacirya, who had desperation like a storm caught behind her teeth, and Turmóndimë, who would have flayed herself alive for her family, and Telperiën, who knew when to walk away, and Apairë, who knew how to fight, and Tinolimë, who knew when to cheat, and Ohtácarë, who trusted in her own rage, and Condiel, who fled a murderous mother, and Melúviel, who turned her tongue to steel and back again to flesh, and Vanimeldë, who knew what it was to find joy in the smallest of things, and Pondarímë, who burned bright as a bonfire, and Uruvoitë, who risked her life for no gratitude and no expectation of gratitude, and Elénniel, who burned for her fears and her truths, and Azarâri, who kept the flickering ember of hope alive for future generations, and Gimilêth, who was afraid and alone and still capable of fanning the flames of rebellion, and Nitiphêl, who understood the power of family, and Inzilbêth, who knew what it was to sacrifice blood and life for a higher cause, and Aglarâni, who knew the acid bite of terror on soft skin, and Míriel herself, finally, the last and youngest of all of these women: Míriel the fair, Míriel the forgotten, Míriel the flaunted, faulty jewel of the line of Tar-Minyatur.</p><p>Míriel, the twenty-fifth and final of the Olórëar of Númenor.</p><p>She laughs in Sauron’s face.)</p><p>…</p><p>(The wave comes, and Míriel, wrists wrapped in Eressecuina’s pearls, Erendis’ jewel-star on her brow, hair braided in the manner that Inzilbêth had favored, shoulders warm in tapestries woven by different hands over and over and over again, watches as the dreams of thirty-three centuries comes to life, and she thinks: <em> Not yet.) </em></p><p>…</p><p>(Here is the first and last grief of Elenna drowned: Manwë allowed Ar-Pharazôn to turn back until his footsteps marred the white, glittering beaches of Valinor. But for Míriel the fair, Míriel the grave, Míriel the flaunted and the folly: there is no mercy given for her, not even as she strives to reach the bloody, star-bright flames atop Meneltarma. For Míriel watches fire belch from Meneltarma's whie peak, and a wave rise over luminous, lovely Westernesse, and she remembers Almarian and Ancalimë and Vanimeldë and Inzilbêth, and Míriel thinks, fiercely, furiously: <em> Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. </em></p><p>The first and final grief of Elenna is this: the drowning of Tar-Míriel, who walked into fire and fury and did not lose her hope unto the last breath was stripped from her lungs.)</p><p>...</p><p>(There is no song for her here at the end of all things, no song and no glory. The water reaches for her with familiar fingers, and Míriel: Uinen-chosen, blood-betrayed, blister-boned, viciously hopeful- she knows this water, and she knows this ending, and she is not surprised even as she is furious, even as she is tired.)</p><p>...</p><p>In the end, the water does not feel like a relief or like a pain.</p><p>It only feels cold, and saltful, and, at the core of the heart of the stem of the root: bitter, bitter, bittersweet.</p>
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